Tortoise and Hare were both known for their culinary expertise and were invited to a face-off in the Iron Chef. Soon after the competition began, it was clear that the Hare was significantly ahead of the Tortoise. The audience was amazed at the speed with which Hare mixed ingredients, poured them into another container and tossed the mixing bowl aside to move on to the next step in preparation.
Tortoise, on the other hand, seemed to be well behind. It wasn’t that he was going slower than Hare, but the audience agonizingly watched as he carefully cleaned each bowl, pan and utensil and put them back in their place after use. Tortoise was making progress, but was well behind the Hare in completing his culinary masterpiece.
Hare continued to out-pace Tortoise, but about halfway through the competition, things began to change. Hare needed to mix raw eggs with Tabasco to make one of his secret sauces, but he couldn’t find a clean mixing bowl. He looked around and finally found a dirty one that had gotten kicked under the counter. He tried to quickly wipe it out with a paper towel, but discovered that the previous ingredients had already hardened.
After spending a few minutes chipping away at the mixture, he left it to soak in water and went to look for another. When he found one that looked like he could clean it easily, he took it back to the sink to rinse it out, but he couldn’t get it under the faucet because the other bowl was in the way. He finally got the soaking bowl out of the way, but managed to spill it on the floor in the process. Once he got the bowl clean, he mixed the two ingredients and then headed over to the stove to pour them into a sauce pan. The first two sauce pans had food cooked to them, and he finally found one that was less dirty and headed back to the sink to clean it. On the way, he slipped on the water previously spilled on the floor….
All this time, Tortoise continued to work as before, cleaning each item after use and putting it back where it belonged. He finished on time as the competition ended with a clean working area and a marvelous meal. Hare, on the other hand, had to work extremely fast to even finish and most of the last half of the competition was spent trying to chip hardened food off bowls and pans. He had to skip several of the things he had planned because he ran out of time.
The moral of the story is this: When it comes to being organized, some of the things that seem to slow you down are the very things that let you work faster in the long run.
The amount of time it takes to stay organized as you work, is much less than the amount of time it takes to get organized when you are under a deadline. Having an organized desk, a good system for dealing with paper, all your contacts in one place, and a well-designed filing system will take time to set up and maintain. Sometimes it might even seem like a waste of time; but when you get busy, these are the very things that will let you operate at peak efficiency.
hehe, that’s a great story Mark. I’m definitely going to use it.
Wonderful tale, Mark! I’ll keep it in mind when I struggle to implement GTD – as I already do… ;-)
I’m glad you liked it. I’ve always been amazed when watching skilled chefs cook that they don’t end up with a huge mess. It is amazing to see their system of cleaning as they go. Now if I could only get to that level of organization with my desk. :)
This story was driving away an effective point…I am glad that this could change the entire outlook
Kudos to have shared the Story with us and I would forward it to all my friends
It is great to see stories created to show the importance of having “Mise en Place” (a French term used by chefs that translates to-everything in its place). Excellent execution begins with proper preparation. Hares are the ones who talk themselves up, while the tortoises are the ones that DO, and execute flawlessly. So true is the analogy.
Mise en Place indeed! It’s often the busiest people who say “I don’t have time to get/stay organized” but the truth is, it’s those people who NEED to take the time to get/stay organized precisely *because* they’re so busy. Organization facilitates a busy person’s success!
~Monica Ricci
but on iron chef, they have a whole staff of people who make sure the chefs always have more clean dishes, and gather up the dirty ones and wash them.
in fact, the chefs all have helper cooks, who also do stuff like that. i understand the point of the story, but iron chef is a particularly poor example…
@Jack – I’ve only seen bits and pieces of Iron Chef, but I have seen them cleaning dishes as they use them. Also from what I understand professional chefs usually clean their dishes as they go. So if the current Iron Chef participants don’t clean their dishes anymore, it seems like the example still works when considering professional chef’s normal work habits.
Mark,
Great example…I always knew I did it right when all the dishes were clean when the cooking was done except the dishes we were eating off of.
When I was playing football the principle was “give a little to get a little”. You take a half step back when doing zone blocking so you can get a proper angle to approach the defender which gets you in a better position quicker, whereas if you go straight for the defender you end up in a bad position.
Jeff
My housemates don’t seem to get this one.
As I cook, I do the same thing. I wash each dish and utensils as I go; this way I can either reuse them while cooking or have less of a mess to cleanup after I’m done eating.
My housemates sit and talk while the food is cooking and that time could be used washing up the dishes that were used to prepare the meal. At the end of it all, they’re left with the dishes used to create the meal, the eating utensils and the pots and pans used to cook it.
They don’t care about dish excess, they just throw them in the dishwasher. The problem is, these things don’t work. Every time I get a dish out of there, I have to clean it again. Dishwashers do a crappy job; maybe ours is broke. I wonder what luck others have had with their dishwashers. For this reason, I wash all my dishes by hand. The bottom line is: we must be like the Tortoise. Awesome article.
Catchy story.. Hit on the point. Thank you.
Excellent post! Organization is an investment of time and money, to be sure, but it yields huge rewards in saved space, time, energy and money. I sometimes think the “energy” dividends are the highest: the sense of freedom you get when your workplace is in order.
This is a super story, I just found it in my feed reader. Thanks for sharing it.
I enjoy cooking and working in the kitchen, and I often find myself getting “into the zone”, cleaning as I go and pacing the courses/dishes. Managing a project like making dinner is a true productivity exercise!
Good story and so true. I find myself wandering in circles when I go in to cook, realize I haven’t made my sink of soapy water…..then everything goes smoothly…
My version of this is my toolbox. Whenever I need to do a job around the house I take my whole toolbox, use the tools out of it I need and replace them immediately.
I used to just take the screwdriver, discover I needed more bits, have to move around the job and end up with tools turning up much later in odd corners. Tidy as you go saves a lot of time with DIY.
Mis en place and clean as you have always led to my success as a chef. Most I work with do not use this tactic until it is beat into them. Great article!