Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
muzani · 2021-12-20 · Original thread
There's a more recent version of the same book, Everything in Its Place: https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Its-Place-Mise-En-Place-Or...

I actually wrote a comment recommending the same book, but might as well tuck it here.

Mise-en-place is well designed but much of it doesn't translate well to knowledge work, which is why these books aren't more popular. It's still a great addition to your toolkit and sometimes when I'm overwhelmed, I remind myself to keep things clean and just finish stuff.

muzani · 2021-07-06 · Original thread
It sounds like much of the anxiety comes from not having control over your life.

There's a book I recommend, Everything in its Place: https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Its-Place-Mise-En-Place-Or...

To quote the book, “By being organized, you will be more efficient. By being more efficient, you will have more time in your day. By having more time in your day, you will be more relaxed in your day; you will be able to accomplish the task at hand in a clear, concise, fluid motion.”

A lot of it is waste. When you're anxious, you try to do more, but it's usually lots of really small things instead of several things in a single big motion. There's redundancy when someone tells us to do something or ask for information and we don't callback. There's wasted mind space when we leave too many small bugs like typos and UI glitches and prioritize the important tough bugs. There's waste when you have 50 tabs open and take too long to find which one you want now.

A lot of that waste can be reduced with planning and preparation. This is nothing new - we expect to write reqs and draw layouts on paper before doing anything, but when you're anxious, this usually gets ditched. And it feels like friction to do all the time. The book covers putting it down on paper, so you can internalise it in your head later.

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