Clean workbench philosophy
Summary
Efficient work rituals lead to predictable, high-quality results. As part of my depth rituals, I setup a clean workbench before I begin any work. The inspiration? Elite sport and master chefs!
I don’t take remote work for granted. In a world where pointy-haired bosses rush to herd employees into offices with little regard for productivity or life situations, I know the privilege remote work affords me. Remote work profoundly impacts my mental and physical health, learning, parenting, and sense of happiness and well-being. But crucially, for any employer, being remote is essential for me to be most productive.
People are different. I don’t doubt that some people feel more productive in an office space. I don’t. It takes many years to cultivate your approach towards productivity and success. Take an example from an unrelated field. India recently won the T20 cricket World Cup. With the number of knockout matches we’ve lost recently, we’d rightfully assumed the mantle of the “new-age chokers”. But hey, all that changed when we lifted the cup on 29th June 2024.
Our captain, Rohit Sharma and our coach, Rahul Dravid, were quick to point out that this wasn’t an overnight success. One of our players, Suryakumar Yadav, pulled off a jaw-dropping catch near the boundary ropes. That moment of brilliance and the win it led to was years in the making. Surya practices his craft, day in and day out, to create such magic moments. I know that working on a computer is hardly an elite-level sport. But there’s undoubtedly a lesson in Surya and the Indian team’s success. Great results stem from perfecting your craft every single day.
I’m not winning any world cups in my insignificant life, but I practice my craft with no less sincerity. And this old dog has a few productivity tricks that work for him. One of my favourite productivity rituals is my “clean workbench philosophy”. Like many other habits, I’ve cultivated this approach for years, and I’d love to share it with you today.
Inspired by master chefs
Our family loves watching Masterchef Australia. Now and then, on the show, you get to watch a top chef at work, and it’s incredible to see them produce art on a plate. Aside from the skill and care they show when handling their ingredients, you’ll notice that these professionals organise themselves before, during and after a cook.
“Mise-en-place” is a French culinary phrase that refers to the setup necessary for cooking. Professional chefs and skilled home cooks organise and arrange the ingredients and elements they need in a neat, predictable order so that they have it all at hand when they start cooking.
You’ll notice that chefs also wipe down and clear out their benches before and after every step so they’re free of distractions. Right before plating, they organise all their elements to focus on arranging them in the most appetising and aesthetically pleasing manner possible.
Since chefs make their dishes over and over, they execute their steps the same way each time — the same mise-en-place, the same techniques, the wipedown, the plating — all of it. Only when they can do this on autopilot can they guarantee that their patrons get the same dining experience each time they serve their specials.
The mise-en-place of knowledge work
Like the master chefs in their kitchens, knowledge workers can also benefit from organising themselves using the “clean workbench philosophy”. This isn’t a novel concept. Cal Newport’s often advocated for a depth ritual - a set of steps that powers you up for deep work. Here’s a loose quote from one of his recent podcast episodes.
“Deep work is unnatural, so we must trick our brain into wanting to do it. Having a highly repetitive ritual that comes right before deep work builds an automatic, reflexive connection to get you ready to execute.”
Different people get into the zone differently. I get into my zone by setting up a clean workbench and implementing a mise-en-place.
Before I begin my work, I assess what I want to achieve during the day. This includes reviewing my calendar, reviewing the focus time I’ve set aside, and checking in on any urgent emails.
Next, I close all browser tabs irrelevant to my first focus block. My room is often dark, so my eyes naturally gravitate to the brightest area, my big screen. This allows me to block out other visual distractions. I also clean up my physical workbench before I begin work.
Meanwhile, Freedom is running in the background. It blocks out all distractions - IM, email, and social media. Between 0900 and 1130 and between 1330 and 1600, I cannot access any of these distractions.
Before starting a piece of work, I task it out. Perfect can often be the enemy of good enough, so it helps me to build a checklist for what “done” will look like. Creating that checklist allows me to scope out the work.
From that point on, it’s a cyclical process. I complete a checklist item, then wipe down my desktop and browser to remove anything that won’t help me for the following item (like in step #2), and then move on. The loop repeats until I finish the task.
Sometimes, I add items to my task’s checklist. Adding a new scope is OK because you uncover some complexity only after you begin work. I don’t beat myself up about not getting things right up front. In fact, writing things up helps me clarify my thinking, and I can assess similar tasks better in the future.
Once I finish, I take a few minutes to describe what I’ve done so anyone on my team can understand my work. We usually track work items using tools like Jira or Trello, so I move the task to the next swim lane on the Scrum or Kanban board and continue my work day.
Every day and every task I do follows a similar pattern. I practice these rituals like cricketers practice their shots and catches, and chefs practice mise-en-place.
A few days back, one of my closest friends said I worry too much about “ways of working.” Well, I do, and I don’t. I don’t know where I read this line, but it’s been stuck in my head for many years now.
“You must think about your work enough, but not as much as you fear you will.”
So yes, I think about how I work and how we work in a team. But for most people, ways of working should hum along quietly in the background. The best practices should be habitual. You should rarely have to think about them except when you’re setting up or when you reflect on your ways of working during a retrospective, for example.
If anything, the idea is to be on autopilot. My clean workbench philosophy is boring as. Today is the first time I’ve explained it in any detail. After a point, you don’t think about “boring” stuff. Surya’s practice is boring. Mise-en-place is boring. But you know what? Boring is efficient. Much like the master chefs. Boring can also lead to “exhilarating” - much like Surya’s catch. How about that as a parting thought?