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He’s making a list, checking it twice, Gonna find out what’s naughty and nice. Ian’s mise-en-placiiiiiiing his life. The entire raison d’être of mise-en-place (ooh, French) is familiarization for the purpose of preparation. You inspect the ingredients. You read the recipe. You go back to re-look at the ingredients. You revisit the recipe with that new perspective. Then you do the whole thing once more for good measure. You mentally separate the wet ingredients from the dry (or even better, pick up a pen and rewrite the list entirely), categorizing each component by purpose and place in the process. For a pumpkin pie, for instance, you’d organize the ingredients for the crust, for the filling, for the whipped cream (not optional), and stew up a strategy based on when each step needs to be completed. So, if I’m doing this whole mise-en-place-my-life thing, it stands to reason I should break it down into its component parts. To address any chronic problems in my day-to-day, I need to know what makes it up. Next step: Data. Analysis. Spreadsheets. I’m in heaven. Take a typical day, whatever that means for you. If 'typical days' are hard to define, maybe expand it to a week and average. Starting from the time you wake up, go hour-by-hour and catalog your time by activity and classification. The categories depend on the peculiarities of your life and will emerge as you conduct your mise, but here are the ones that I settled on:
Armed with this data, I fearlessly waded into the next phase of my quest: I went and made a bunch of charts. Here’s my life organized by class: And by activity throughout the day: You know what? That giant green chunk marked ‘SLEEP’ is getting in my way. It's important, but it obscures how I elect to break up my time. Let’s remove it and see how my waking hours are spent. So here it is again by class, this time without sleep: And again, by duration, without sleep: So upon inspection of this data, what did I take away? First, I didn’t realize what a time-suck work is! Not that it’s a waste of time—I’m quite content in my current job, thank you very much—but I work almost as much as I sleep, more time than I spend chilling out and working out combined. Damn. I was also pleasantly surprised to find the balance I strike between relaxation and recreation; they’re basically equal. Like, I know I spend a fair amount of time at the gym, but the hours tend to vanish (and yet also seem interminable) in the hazy doldrums of online video. This analysis also exposes how my time is distributed over my waking hours. It’s simplistic, of course—I interrupt YouTube with sporadic bouts of dishwashing, and sometimes I zone out at work (the heck, you say!)—but broadly speaking there are stretches of dedicated activity capped with shorter flurries of transitional action. Dunno what to make of that insight, but it seems valuable. Better to know it and not need it than need it and not know it. What do I do with this info? Sit with it. Let it percolate and mature. This awareness will never expire; should the time come when it becomes relevant, I’ll have it in my back pocket. There’s a quote from Lady Bird that’s become a governing principle for me: SJ: You write about Sacramento so affectionately and with such care. LB: I was just describing it. SJ: Well it comes across as love. LB: Sure, I guess I pay attention. SJ: Don't you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention? In essence: Where goes your energy, so goes your love. Invest in what matters to you. Or, to put it into more common parlance: Home is where the heart is.
Over time, we lose focus. Inch by inch, the kinks and caprices of our banal existences steer us slightly awry. I think I’ll revisit this exercise now and again to make sure I’m still on an acceptable course, that my efforts and affections align. Once a year sounds good. Yeah, at least annually. Setting a calendar reminder now. Next year I’ll conduct another mise-en-place, compare these graphs, and see what's changed. Wouldn’t that be an exhibit for the ages? Lacking children and yearbook photos, I’ll collect quantized charts chronicling my curt course on this corporal coil. Cause I’m a nerd.
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