Take a Page out of the Cookbook

Two eggs.

The chef forgot to check their ingredients, and now two eggs stood between them and a finished soufflé batter.

During their imminent trip to the store, their half-done batter was bound to deflate beyond repair.

Much like a deflating baked good, our momentum on a project can deflate if we don’t make sure that we have all of our eggs on hand before we start.

Everything In Its Place

French has contributed many terms to cooking that most of us have heard: julienne, sauté, flambé, béchamel.

There’s another French term used in professional chefs’ kitchens, called mise en place.

Mise en place is the idea of putting into place or having everything in its place. When chefs do this, it means cutting the onions, measuring the spices, and weighing the meat before they so much as turn on a burner.

They ensure that everything they need is organized and prepared. It’s the best way to guarantee success.

Prep Your Ingredients

The white collar world might not call it the same thing as the white hat world, but employees and businesses can benefit from mise en place just as much.

Imagine that you sit down to pull together a report for a client. At first, you’re flying through it.

Then you get sidetracked by having to track down old email conversations, a data sheet from three months ago, and the password to log in to an analytics site.

You knew that you would need that data sheet, but you didn’t pull it up before you got into the meat of the work. That sidebar, a.k.a. the trip to the store for two more eggs, has derailed your flow.

Your momentum is deflated.

However, if you had focused on your mise en place before diving in and had opened a few tabs you knew you were going to need, your mouse would be free to fly across the pages with ongoing momentum.

Find Your Successful Setup

Mise en place encourages you to work efficiently, which, in turn, helps you take control of your own time.

 Take a page from a chef’s cookbook the next time you sit down to tackle a project or task.

Measure your spices (find the data sheet), cut the onion (pull up email exchanges), and weigh the meat (log in to the analytics site).

You’ll find your momentum flowing down the kitchen assembly line in no time.