Mise en Place: The productivity technique of professional chefs applied to life
Organize your life like a chef in the kitchen
🏷️ Categories: Attention, Time management.
If you've ever felt stressed while cooking — looking for the knife while the pan smokes, opening the fridge with wet hands, or digging for an ingredient while wondering if you already added salt to the stew — you're not alone. And if that chaos also shows up in your work, your morning routine, or your creative process, you’re not alone there either.
I’ve been there too. Until I discovered a mindset that transformed the way I work, create, and yes — cook.
It’s called mise en place.
I learned it from chefs, but I applied it to my whole life. And the difference was incredible. Let’s explore why maybe what you need isn’t more willpower, more hours in the day, or more coffee — but simply putting everything in its place.
What is mise en place?
Dan Charnas, author of Everything in Its Place, studied hundreds of professional chefs and saw they all had one thing in common: they had mastered mise en place.
Mise en place means “everything in its place” in French, and it refers to having everything ready before you start cooking. Tools prepped and organized, ingredients chopped and arranged. A chef who practices mise en place cooks without stress, quickly, and without mistakes.
Dan Charnas identified 3 key principles for successfully applying this mindset.
Let’s look at them — both in and out of the kitchen…
The 3 Principles of Mise en Place
1. Preparation
In the chef’s world, cooking doesn’t come first.
Preparing comes first.
A chef doesn’t show up at 6pm and start improvising. They arrive in the morning, sharpen knives, prep ingredients, organize tools. They plan. Because they know: the success of dinner service depends on the work done before the diners show up.
And life works the same way. How often do you start your workday or morning without this kind of preparation? Do you anticipate what’s coming, or just react?
What Charnas proposes (and what I’ve adopted as a sacred routine) is the Daily Meeze. Do this at the end of each day:
Clean: Tidy up your physical and digital space. Clear your inbox. Do the dishes. Put everything in its place. Nothing should be left dirty or out of order.
Plan: Review your task list. What’s still pending? What’s no longer relevant? What keeps repeating that should be automated? This is where the Ivy Lee Method comes in.
Prep tomorrow, tonight: Set up your desk. Choose tomorrow’s outfit. Get everything ready the night before. It’s simple, but its impact is huge: you’ll start the next day with clarity and energy from minute one. You’re ready for action — no procrastination.
You’re setting yourself up for a great day by removing early friction.
2. Process
Starting the day with order is easy. Keeping it that way when everything gets messy — that’s where mise en place proves its value. To maintain order, you need to have clear processes for everything you do regularly.
Chefs have a process for everything.
How to chop an onion. How to clean while cooking. Where to place each tool. How to peel each ingredient… If you do something frequently, you must know the most efficient, cleanest way to do it.
This means:
Cleaning tools while you cook, not after.
Putting everything back in its place as soon as you finish using it.
Not piling things up. Not procrastinating on tidying.
Your workspace reflects your mind. Keep it clean and organized.
In the digital world, this means closing unnecessary tabs. Archiving emails you’ve dealt with. Having clearly named folders. Using tags. Not having 17 untitled documents floating on your desktop.
I learned this the hard way.
For months, while writing each Jardín Mental letter, I wasted a ridiculous amount of time searching for files and notes. The lack of order meant a task that should’ve taken minutes always dragged on.
It was always the same story — until I organized my digital space.
Problem solved. Process optimized. Hundreds of hours saved.
3. Presence
A chef can’t afford distractions.
A single mistake can ruin hours of work. They have to be fully present. That presence is what enables clear decision-making, prevents errors, and delivers quality results. And that same attention is what we need in a world full of interruptions.
To bring mise en place beyond the kitchen, start by eliminating distractions:
Put your phone on airplane mode.
Don’t multitask. Do one thing at a time, with full focus.
Batch similar tasks to minimize mental switching.
Use the Pomodoro technique to work in high-focus intervals.
The key is to get into a flow state with each task. Like a chef with each dish.
Your desk becomes the writer’s kitchen.
Your task list, your daily menu.
Your ideas, the ingredients.
Then the ordinary becomes smoother. Less chaotic. More productive.
If you think about your day-to-day, every activity has its own structure. Its own rhythm. Its own preparation. Set things up the night before, and starting becomes easy. During the process, never leave things messy. Ending with everything as tidy as when you began — that’s the goal. Focus on each process and keep it clean.
That’s how you stop racing against the clock. You stop improvising your day — you execute it.
And that’s where real impact begins. Work like a chef.
✍️ Your turn: How could you apply mise en place in your life? Think about those processes you repeat over and over. About the clutter, the time spent searching, cleaning, walking across the room, the distractions, the power of prepping everything the night before.
💭 Quote of the day: “No more looking! No more looking! I’ve got what I need. And now — to cooking.” — Dr. Seuss, Scrambled Eggs Super!
See you in the next one! 👋
📚 References:
Charnas, D. (2017). Everything in Its Place: The Power of Mise-En-Place to Organize Your Life, Work, and Mind.
How true! My mother even taught me this. Organize your things the night before so the morning isn't chaotic and you don't forget something. Clean the kitchen before bedtime so you don't wake up to a mess in the morning when you're groggy and trying to gather your wits.