#33: deep work meets mise-en-place
how to protect a pocket of time through careful preparation
In this letter:
📌 Today we’re covering how to iterate upon your self-care + news consumption habits based on the concept of mise-en-place. I take you through 2 books I’m loving and how I’ve applied their lessons to my fall setup.
The Exercise:
What deep work (or simply treasured pocket of time) do you want to ensure you prioritize this fall?
What would you have to change about your a) self-care and b) news consumption habits to allow it to happen?
How can you set up your spaces to make the tools of work more accessible and the temptations of distraction less accessible?
References:
Book: Everything in Its Place on applying mise-en-place to all of life
Book: Deep Work on prioritizing and practicing the skills of deep work
Article: Mise-en-place for knowledge workers from Tiago Forte
Article: You really need to quit Twitter
Article: What if paid work were no longer the centerpiece of American life?
Past Time Spent issue: Read-it-later news consumption tip
Good morning,
I started a new book last week called Everything in Its Place: The Power of Mise-en-Place to Organize your Life, Work and Mind.
Mise-en-place is a well-known French culinary term that means “putting in place,” which refers to the setup procedures used in professional kitchens to ensure that ingredients and tools are put in place before cooking, in order to be most efficient.
In the book, writer Dan Charnas interviews countless culinary professionals to extract key principles from mise-en-place that could be applied to any part of one’s life, be it your own kitchen at home, or your office or digital life.
It all begins with a plan and a map: how will everything happen on the upcoming shift, and accordingly, where should everything be?
He goes on to offer 10 instructive principles of mise-en-place and applies them in great detail to various aspects of how we live, both offline and online. They include:
preparing ahead of time in order to “work clean” with time
arranging space and movements effectively
cleaning your workspace as you go
ensuring the first move you make is the right one
finishing or pausing tasks effectively
slowing down instead of stopping when panicked or distracted
communicating clearly and respectfully (and getting/giving confirmation)
balancing internal and external awareness
inspecting and correcting by tallying errors and consequences
total utilization (conserving space and time through routines)
While each of these principles is incredibly wise, as I read, I found myself struggling to figure what they could be applied to, especially if you’re not the type who is excited by productivity hacks, like say, Tiago Forte, from whom I first discovered Charnas’ book.
But then I thought of another book I’ve been reading—Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
Deep work, Newport explains, is the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks, compared to shallow work, which is not cognitively demanding, and can be performed while distracted.
Given how competitive our economy has become, Newport’s key message is that the ability to master hard things quickly and produce at an elite level are the key differentiators to thrive in today’s economy and he encourages readers to practice that type of focused work.
Again, I loved the concept but how many people are really going to build the discipline to work on it? (Note: if you’re not sold by the ‘thrive in this economy’ argument, it does apply nicely to artistic work as well.)
Prioritizing focused work isn’t easy given how scattered our attention has become, how inundated we are with notifications, and how tempting endless discovery streams (like tiktok, instagram and twitter) are.
But, putting mise-en-place and deep work together, I started wondering, could we encourage ourselves to inch towards deeper work by setting up our environments to help us get there?
In other words, what might my own own mise-en-place look like in regard to the deep work I’m trying to do?
For example, in writing a research heavy book that requires a lot of reading and interviews, deep work for me looks like 50% reviewing and synthesizing research and 50% creating new language for what I’m trying to convey, which to me, is artistic process. I need to be alone, have my tools near me and have all notifications and access to new information off.
If you look at the principles of mise-en-place though, that actually goes far beyond setting up my desk. It’s a mental space I have to enter, that takes preparation far in advance. And it’s a space I have to challenge myself to stay in.
That’s why I was delighted by principle #6, “slowing down to speed up,” as I find myself regularly having this conversation with myself when the information stream coming at me feels like it is too much, too fast.
You don’t have to entirely unplug from the news or social media, but you can create protected spaces in which it cannot enter. This begins with slowing down enough to reflect on what you need.
So here’s today’s exercise.
Choosing something you want to protect can be the key to changing your consumption habits
Care and consumption, the two subjects of this newsletter series, are both inextricably tethered to “the news.” More and more often, self-care is being presented as a reaction to how the world feels in our newsfeeds, and intentional information consumption is being recommended by therapists after social media or news cycles have become unbearable.
And in my opinion, unplugging for unplugging’s sake, doesn’t really work.
(See: Caitlin Flanagan’s attempt to get off Twitter.)
What would it take for human beings to view these two practices as necessary priorities in life? What would it take for us to purposely structure our lives (and economies) around health, contribution and doing our best work?
(Side note: Here’s an interesting Vox piece on covid and the history of paid work.)
I certainly don’t have the answers, but because we are entering a new season this week (at least on the east coast), I decided to spend the last few days modifying my own care and consumption practices to protect the time I spend writing, a current priority.
For you, it could be the time you spend with your kids or partner, or the time you spend learning a new skill or pursuing a new dream, or the time you spend taking care of yourself and feeding yourself a little bit better. Or maybe you actually want to practice deep work :)
Here are a few elements of my mise-en-place that take the form of a week-long practice. Basic as they sound, I’m finding them really helpful to create a protected space and steadier attention span.
Information Consumption:
deleted social media apps from my phone for a few weeks (I still use them on my computer during certain hours)
limited news consumption to 1x per day
reading everything later by sending it to a read-later folder, to open only when I’m ready for slow reading
set up my digital desk by structuring Evernote into a series of folders that cascade my attention through tasks to focus faster
set up my physical desk with notes and print reading open, so the friction of “opening the book” does not exist
meal-prepped, which I never do but I work so much better when I don’t have to make food decisions or look up food ideas
working out as a way to transition my day, because I can’t really jump from shallow work (or paid work) to deep work easily on my own
So here’s your exercise:
What deep work do you want to ensure you prioritize this fall?
And if it isn’t “work” then what is some space or time you want to protect for yourself that would feel generative, be it rest, creativity, a relationship or otherwise?What would you have to change about your a) care and b) consumption habits to allow space and energy for it to happen?
Per Charnas, don’t be afraid to make a checklist or schedule that you have to repeat! A huge part of mise-en-place is that the repetition makes it second-nature.How can you set up your spaces to make the tools of work more accessible and the temptations of distraction less accessible?
Think about both the physical and the digital.
Happy designing :)
Jihii