by Dan Charnas
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.
COMMITTING TO BEHAVIORS
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.
6.Slowing down to speed up—working clean with emotions
What to know. Precision precedes speed. A calm body can calm the mind.
What to do. Commit to working smoothly and steadily. Use physical order to restore mental order. Don’t rush.
7.Open eyes and ears—working clean with your senses
What to know. Excellence requires both focus and awareness. Ambition, ability, and attunement can cultivate awareness.
What to do. Commit to balancing internal and external awareness. Stay alert.
8.Call and callback—working clean with communication
What to know. Efficient teams become an interconnected nervous system. Excellence requires active listening.
What to do. Commit to confirming and expecting confirmation of essential communication. Call back.
9.Inspect and correct—working clean with feedback
What to know. Mastery is never achieved; it is a constant state of evaluation and refinement.
What to do. Commit to coaching yourself, to being coached, and to coaching others. Evaluate yourself.
10.Total utilization—working clean with resources
What to know. The grand ideal of working clean is no wasted space, no wasted motion, no wasted resource, no wasted moment, no wasted person.
What to do. Commit to valuing space, time, energy, resources, and people. Waste nothing.
TOOLS FOR WORKING CLEAN
Working clean does not require a huge investment. You need only six things.
1.A workstation. The designated “clean space” you created in The Second Ingredient: Arranging Spaces, Perfecting Movements. It could be as simple as a table and chair. You must be able to work, sit, stand, and move comfortably. Mainly you’ll need space to keep some of the items below handy.
2.An inbox and outbox. A place for incoming stuff, and another for stuff you’ll be carrying out the door with you the next time you leave. The object of these boxes is to see them empty at least once per day. At the beginning of your Daily Meeze, the inbox will be full and the outbox empty. At the end, the inbox will be empty and the outbox will be full.
3 & 4.Action list and calendar. These are your planning tools. You can get by with paper versions of these, but I strongly recommend digital lists and calendars for the flexibility they afford (see “Technology: software” below). If you use a printed task or “to-do” list (or as we call it, the Action list), you will need two sheets: (1) a running list to catch incoming tasks (“Action inbox”); and (2) a list of those Actions, categorized into Missions (“Action list”).
5.File box or drawer, manila folders, and markers. If you don’t have a file drawer, use a standing file or, better yet, a file box (usually square and plastic with a closing top and a handle). This is where you keep your “hot” files, the papers you refer to regularly. Do you need a big file cabinet? Maybe, but only for deep storage or occasional reference. Unless you work at an office where you need daily access to reams of client files, you don’t need more space than a square file box or drawer affords.
6.Soft towel and spray bottle. These last tools aren’t for hygiene, but for reinforcing the need for and benefits of making clean transitions between tasks.
Optional Tools
1.Technology: hardware. If you can afford a computer, smartphone, or tablet, by all means buy and use them. Just know that your technology becomes your virtual mise-en-place as well and must also remain clean spaces. Your technology is an extension of your nervous system, and that means you want no friction in its function.
2.Technology: software. Digital task lists and calendars are preferable to printed ones, but they are not magical solutions to the problem of personal organization. Without daily maintenance the digital versions tend to get just as messy as the paper ones: Calendars become littered with unaccomplished items, hidden from view as the days progress; task lists accumulate action items but don’t present them in ways that are useful for execution. The calendar and the task list should ideally be integrated as they are in the basic kitchens of the CIA. A few applications have emerged to try to bridge these shortcomings, enabling you, for example, to easily schedule tasks on your calendar, to auto-forward tasks and calendar events to the next day, or to automatically schedule new tasks in the empty spaces on your calendar. These apps, too, aren’t magic bullets. What we end up with are too many overdue items (and the guilt that comes with them), unless we regularly, manually attend to them.
Here’s what works: For task lists we recommend using software like OmniFocus, which has an inbox (hereinafter referred to as the “Action inbox”) for easily catching and sorting incoming tasks, and also provides a way to manually sort tasks in the order that you’d like to accomplish them. For calendars, the sta
ndard options from Google, Apple, and Microsoft Outlook work just fine.
Are notebook apps like Evernote helpful? Absolutely. They’re like a rolling file box that can grow as deep as you need. That also means that you must expend the effort to keep them orderly and clean.
For up-to-date links to the latest and best organization apps and technology, please visit WorkClean.com.
3.Tools and containers. Desks tend to fill up with tools (staplers, tape dispensers) of all kinds, or containers (for pens, paper clips, and the like). If you can keep these tools off your workstation and in a drawer, please do. If you use them quite regularly, arrange them in a way that you can have easy access. On my desk, I use a few containers to keep some items close. But I do keep objects contained; otherwise, they tend to spread. For example, on my desk I place a tray for my wallet and anything else that comes and goes with me when I arrive and leave. Sometimes I’ll gather stacks of books and papers all relating to one temporary project that I’ll want to keep together and are too bulky for filing; for these I keep file boxes that I can stack by my desk or on a shelf or in a nearby cabinet.
Just do your Daily Meeze, and everything will fall into place.
THE WORK CLEAN SYSTEM
To work clean, we need a system of organization that embodies those values. The Work Clean system does this in three fundamental ways.
1.It deals honestly with time by eliminating the false distinction between tasks and appointments. In Work Clean, all tasks and appointments are Actions, and we include all Actions on our schedules and lists.
2.It increases focus and reduces chaos by tying the number of Actions directly to your number of active projects, or Missions, and by using Frontburner and Backburner designations to order those Actions.
3.It balances immersive and process time by creating “buckets” of time called Routines.
Actions: Your Ingredients
All the things we do in life—the thinking, the writing, the correspondence, the procedures, the errands, the conferences, the meetings, the chores—are Actions.
There is no difference between a task and an appointment. Both are Actions.
There are only two types of Actions: scheduled and unscheduled.
Missions: Your Menu
Each of these Actions we do for a reason.
The Mission is the reason. Your Missions are the things you want to accomplish in life and in work. Every Mission has within it a number of Actions or steps needed to accomplish that Mission. Missions give those Actions meaning, and most crucially, order. Missions are, in effect, top-level Actions. They are supposed to be big goals, with a time scope of a year or more. For example, “Finish presentation to investors” is a goal that requires within it many Actions. But it is not a Mission. That presentation is an Action that is part of a larger Mission, “Establish new company.”
To create your Mission list, envision your life like Chef Eric Ripert does, by dividing it into thirds: Work, Family, Self.
For each of these three areas, list the things you want to accomplish within the next year. Each Mission should begin with a verb. Your Missions could be things like:
For balance, pursue Missions in each area of your life. For most of us, our work Missions will be more numerous and urgent than our family and personal ones. Single people or those without children may not have many family commitments at all and thus may conceive of their lives as a simple divide between work and personal. Whatever your circumstances, all Missions—whether business or personal—take time. To be honest with time, you must consider all your Missions, not just those in your work life.
How many Missions should we have simultaneously? In my professional life, I have six right now—four writing projects, a teaching job, and one entrepreneurial endeavor. In my personal life—both for family and for myself—I have seven, ranging from “Plan fun things with wife and son” to “Renovate apartment.” Overall, that’s 13. That’s too many. I think 10 is probably the optimum number of active Missions for most working people. And I can tell you that no matter how much I rationalize the necessity of every single one of those 13 Missions, many of them will suffer for the ambition of their author. I can’t sustain that number in the long term. True, a heavy workload can encourage productivity because it compresses our time and because it forces us to plan, conserve energy and motion, and be efficient. But there comes a point of diminishing returns on that workload-to-efficiency dynamic. When we can’t say “no” or “maybe later” to certain Missions in deference to our capabilities, our capabilities will say no for us when we start missing appointments and neglecting tasks. Better we decide and keep our control.
Frontburners and Backburners: Your Recipes
Every Mission requires a recipe to see it through. As in kitchens, recipes are lists of Actions that, in most cases, will happen in a particular sequence and often have sub-Actions.
The difference between chefs and the rest of us is that chefs spend a lot more time thinking about that sequence. They think about it in the evening when they plan their next day’s service and in the morning before they head to work. They order their tasks on paper when they make lists—first this, then that. They reorder them in their mind while they prep and while cooking, too. You can see a representation of their mind on their stove: pans needing immediate attention in front; pots bubbling all day in the back; platters of ingredients waiting for heat off to the sides. The backlog of work can easily overcome line cooks, so they’ve trained their minds to do two crucial things: queue all incoming orders and then focus only on the next step for each dish currently on their burners.
The beauty of mise-en-place is the ability it engenders in chefs and cooks to fight chaos and tune out distraction. If a cook is responsible for 10 menu items, and each of those items has a dozen to two dozen steps in its preparation, that’s anywhere from 120 to 240 individual tasks that she needs to be ready to accomplish at any given time. What this crush of work demands is not so much a sense of importance—which is how most systems of organization attempt to create order out of chaos—but sequence. It’s not always about doing the so-called important thing first. It’s about ordering our Actions within time to get the important Missions accomplished. What’s the first thing I need to do, right now, to get myself closer to the finish line and get this thing out the door? The first move is always figuring out the first move.
Now think of each incoming order as a Mission. Each order must follow a recipe, an exact sequence and flow of Actions. And only one Action for each Mission can be executed at any given moment, even when they cascade in a flow that comes from task chaining and balanced movement, making it seem as if the cook is doing a million things at once. Since these Actions happen in rapid succession, a good line cook always knows what her following move will be for each order under fire.
In the Work Clean system, the Frontburner is the first Action needed to move forward on a Mission. All the following Actions are Backburners.
The Frontburners get our attention. And the number of Frontburners is itself limited by the number of Missions. If you have 10 Missions, you will have 10 Frontburners, one for each Mission. The reward for this way of thinking is that 240 tasks become 10. If we have 10 Missions, we always have 10 tasks to accomplish, the 10 Frontburners. Ten is, of course, a more manageable number than 240, and a profound shift from the “to-do” list experience where we accumulate tasks until we have a list of hundreds. In most digital task lists, we are encouraged to give generic rankings of importance—priority 1, priority 2, priority 3, and so on—not to create a sequence. So we make little “1,” “2,” and “3” notations beside each of these tasks, and before long we have 50 “1s,” 200 “2s,” and 500 “3s,” rendering those priorities meaningless and unactionable. Order, or sequence, is the only way we really execute: what comes first, what comes next, and so on. And since we can rarely do more than one thing at a time, it’s not helpful to have so many tasks in our field of vision. Instead of making an ever-expanding li
st of hundreds of tasks (and working furiously and often futilely to check them all off), you will be keeping a list of just 10 Frontburners. Sometimes you might have five active Missions, and other times you might have 15. And in either instance your number of Frontburners will always equal your number of Missions. Simple.
The Backburners are the following tasks for each Mission, the ones to which you’ll be pivoting after the Frontburners are finished. When you accomplish any Frontburner, the Backburner behind it slides up immediately to take its place as Frontburner, and so on, until that Mission is accomplished. The first one or two Backburners remain in your peripheral vision. Backburners get murky beyond the second or third in a Mission list. That’s perfectly okay. While it’s good to list out every step in a Mission before you embark, in many cases that won’t be possible. We don’t work so far ahead of the curve all the time. It’s sufficient to make a daily habit of ordering your Backburners on the fly as your Missions progress.
In the same way that you pick your Missions with the year in mind, you select your Frontburners and arrange your Backburners with the coming week in mind.
Routines: Your Mise-en-Place
You’ve identified your Missions and selected your Frontburners. You have a whole bunch of stuff to do.
When do you do it? Routines are the answer to that question.
Your Routines are essentially an empty template of your ideal week. They are the planning you do before planning—like the designs that Jimi Yui does for a kitchen before he builds it and the chef and cooks move in; or the plate that Chef Masa draws and makes before creating the meal on top of it. Scheduled Routines aren’t the same thing as scheduled Actions—tasks or appointments—in that they are meant to be looser, a framework beneath your schedule. Routines are “time buckets” in your schedule, into which you put Actions. They are like the cook’s empty “nine-pans,” a mise-en-place for time.
