Work Clean (28 page)

In the sections that follow, we'll review the commitments of working clean and introduce the Work Clean system of organization. We'll also walk together through a typical Day of Working Clean, to see how we can integrate all of the above into our lives.

The entrance requirement for mise-en-place is
commitment.

The two terms are actually linguistic cousins. The French word
mise
and the English word
commitment
both derive from the Latin verb
mettre,
meaning “to put.” When we practice mise-en-place, we “put ourselves” in place. When we commit, we literally “put
ourselves” with something or someone. Mise-en-place is the commitment we put in place to put ourselves in place, to make ourselves ready for life.

Cooks with commitment build lasting careers. Cooks without it lurch through spotty, unimpressive ones. Success without commitment can only come from luck or genius. And most people don't fathom how much commitment it takes for a genius to rise from obscurity to acclaim. Watch any genius in action and you'll see a genius
in action
. Genius isn't a noun; it's a verb.

Excellence requires commitment; your commitment demands adherence to your mise-en-place, your practice, your system. Anything else and you, too, will be counting on luck or genius.

“There are two ways to succeed,” says Chef Alfred Portale. “One is to be a genius, and the other is to be better prepared and work harder. And the latter is where I fall. My kitchen is
never
in the weeds. We can handle any volume. If you make sure that your mise-en-place is done perfectly, you are 90 percent of the way there.”

When we work clean we commit to the three values of mise-en-place—
preparation, process,
and
presence.
These values take on a different flavor when taken out of the kitchen, but their essence remains the same.

Take 30 minutes every day to clear your workstation and plan the next day, a daily personal mise-en-place called the Daily Meeze. The Daily Meeze is the central, nonnegotiable habit of working clean.

In our lives we keep all kinds of nonnegotiable habits, things we do without fail and without excuse, whether they're as mundane as bathing or as rigorous as exercise. We honor all kinds of promises to others. We show up dutifully at regular meetings. We
pledge money and labor and time and abide by those agreements. We observe standard courtesies and often put others' needs above our own.

But for all the pledges that we make to ourselves and others, most of us rarely make room for a regular practice of preparation and planning. We'll spend a focused hour grooming ourselves but rush through 2 minutes of making a “to-do” list. We'll clean the kitchen even when we don't want to because we are afraid of the consequences, like insects and pests or an angry roommate, but our professional workspaces—both physical and virtual—stay chaotic even when we're fastidious about our personal ones. We don't think too much about the repercussions. Stale bread on our kitchen counter? We know what that attracts. Stale work on our desk? The ramifications aren't as visible, but perhaps more insidious and damaging in the long run.

Taking a half-hour to clear your plate and plan your day ahead imparts serenity to your life. It offloads and logs all the things your mind, your devices, your bags, and your body have been carrying, and it provides vital assurance that you'll consult that log on a daily basis without fail. In that sense, doing your 30-minute Daily Meeze can be as beneficial to your physical, mental, and spiritual health as nutrition, hygiene, exercise, or meditation.

I propose you treat your preparation routine as I treat mine: as a spiritual practice. Your Daily Meeze shares many commonalities with spiritual practices: Like yoga, tai chi, or martial arts, it involves repetitive, physical movements and mental concentration. Like that of meditation or prayer, its goal is to keep you focused on the highest good for yourself, your family, and your world. In addition to the other things I've done in my professional life, I've been a yoga teacher for 2 decades. So I say the same thing to you that I say to my yoga students:
Just add the practice to your life and see what happens.
Don't judge it, just do it. Resist the temptation to say that your practice was “bad” because you didn't get everything done. Thirty minutes a day of
any
dedicated practice—from piano to planning—is bound to transform you.

My own teacher always used to say,
Do your spiritual practice, and everything else will fall into place.
So when Thomas Keller says, in effect,
keep your station clean and everything will follow from that,
he's tapping into that same spiritual wisdom, and it's like hearing the voice of my own teacher again.

Just do your Daily Meeze, and everything will fall into place.

Now that you've prepared your plan, you must follow it. And if you want to get better at what you do, you must examine the results of your plan and your product and make corrections.

Commitment to a process that makes you better means following the schedule you've set for yourself, using checklists, and cultivating better techniques and “life hacks.” It means incorporating the values and habits of working clean into your workday. It also means a commitment to the inverse: altering or abandoning processes that make you worse.

How can you tell whether a process makes you better or worse? Understand first that what we're after is
excellence,
not
productivity.
Productivity is working hard. Excellence is working clean. Plenty of well-meaning people equate working hard with a
work ethic.
But what's so ethical about working wastefully into the night while the people you love wait for you? A work ethic must include ethics or it isn't worth a damn. Any process that helps you balance your professional obligations with your personal ones is a process that makes you better.

Striving for productivity
alone
presents a danger in that a quest for productivity often crosses the line between valuing process and fetishizing it. Productivity is not the solution to all problems. Humans are beings with other commitments and considerations. We need work and we need rest. We need periods of focus and also times of aimlessness. We need time for ourselves and time for others. Without balance, the work will suffer in the
long term anyway. Committing to productivity alone is like committing to only inhaling, never exhaling. That kind of commitment will kill you.

Yet productivity at any cost is the secret to the success of so many executives, chefs included. These men and women have sacrificed not only their own well-being but that of others around them: spouses, children, employees, customers. Many culinarians cop to this: They work themselves sick, and then they sicken themselves even more with drink and drugs and then keep working through it all. This severe polarity of tension and release, alas, is one of the hazards of a life dedicated to excellence in any field. But just as we see the hazard, we can envision the ideal, the commitment to process that makes us
better;
not just efficient or productive, but better in an all-around or holistic way.

Opposite the process fetishists are the
process dodgers.
To these folks, the idea of following schedules, checklists, and rules—even if they created them—connotes banality, drudgery, and boredom. Process dodgers believe they are artists, and that creativity needs complete freedom. But true creatives—the people who actually make the food, the art, the architecture, the products, and the services we enjoy—understand that excellence comes from cultivating a craft through dedicated, dogged practice. True artists have a process.

As long as we consider our betterment, we'll stay healthy. We won't be the kind of managers who make bad decisions on behalf of the people who work for us, nor tolerate such abuses from our own managers. The product of our commitment to the right process—fed by knowledge and guarded by empathy—is a
real
work ethic.

Working clean requires your presence on a number of levels.

The first level demands that you
be
and
stay
present physically: that you show up for yourself and for your fellows, and also that
you don't give up on yourself or them. Japanese cooks have a great word for this behavior:
keizo-ku
.

The second level demands that you be and stay present mentally: becoming one with the work, being “with” the work but also “with” your comrades at the same time. This manifestation of presence—to be focused
and
open—is the goal of mise-en-place: Commit to the plan and the process yet remain aware of the shifting circumstances around you.

Committing to presence means that we cultivate a practice of
listening.
When you listen, where are your eyes? Are they on your computer screen or phone, or are they on the person speaking? When you listen, where is your body? Is it pointed into the conversation, or away from it? When you listen, where is your mouth? Is it fixed to speak, or is it relaxed and open? When you listen, where is your nose? Are you breathing slowly, or is your breath held? When you listen, where is your mind? Are you hearing the words and using your mind to divine the subtext, or are you listening to your own inner narrative? Being able to listen with the coordination of your entire being, body and mind, is perhaps the most powerful human skill. It's also one of the hardest things to do, which is another way of saying you will only get better at it if you practice. The better you listen, the more control you will have to wield your powers of attention in more complex ways. The better your focus, the more you'll be able to extend that focus over a greater area.

Committing to presence means that we cultivate an ability to be
deliberate.
When you decide to do something, get it done. When you set an appointment with someone else or yourself, show up. When you say “yes,”
mean
yes. When you say “no,”
mean
no. When you say “11:30,”
mean
11:30. Guard against forces that distract you from the tasks at hand. The cultivation of deliberation works the same way as the cultivation of listening: Better listeners can listen to more things, and better actors can act on more things.

Committing to presence means that we cultivate
discreteness,
boundaries between our work and our personal lives. We don't lose focus and do a bunch of mindless personal stuff to disengage at work. And we don't check our work e-mail when we get bored
while we're playing with our kids. We avoid scattering our energies in a way that prevents our full presence in either setting. We are “in” or “out,” “on” or “off.” Wherever we are, we're there.

For committed, deliberate people who've been working all day, that “running list” can be hard to turn off at night. But preparation and process make presence—letting go of that inner chatter—easier. At the end of the day, the list is complete, and you can enjoy another life, a life beyond work.

Working clean means committing to integrating the Ingredients, or behaviors, of mise-en-place into your life.

1.
Planning is prime—
working clean with time

What to know.
Planning is first thought, not afterthought. Right planning promotes right action, saves time, and unlocks opportunity. Planning entails the scheduling of tasks, which means being honest with time, respecting both your abilities and limitations.

What to do.
Commit to being honest with time. Plan daily.

2.
Arranging spaces, perfecting movements—
working clean with space and motion

What to know.
Creating ergonomic workspaces means more than making things look pretty. It means setting a place for yourself that allows economy of motion and consumes less physical and mental energy. The less you move, the more effortless your work will be and the more brain-power you can reserve for new work and new thoughts.

What to do.
Commit to setting your station and reducing impediments to your movements and activities. Remove friction.

3.
Cleaning as you go—
working clean with systems

What to know.
All systems are useless unless maintained. The real work of organization is not being clean,
but working clean: keeping that system no matter how fast and furious your pace is. Working clean helps you work faster and better.

What to do.
Commit to maintaining your system. Always be cleaning.

4.
Making first moves—
working clean with priorities

What to know.
The present moment is worth more than a future one because present action sets processes in motion and unlocks others' work on your behalf.

What to do.
Commit to using time to your benefit. Start now.

5.
Finishing actions—
working clean with obligations and expectations

What to know.
A project that is 90 percent complete is zero percent complete because it's not deliverable. Orphaned tasks create more work.

What to do.
Commit to delivering. When a task is nearly done, finish it. Always be unblocking.