How ‘mise en place’ helps new creative habits stick
What if you could automate some of the hard work that goes into your creative projects? I’m not talking about AI. Your human brain can handle this thanks to a culinary idea called mise en place.
According to this Hidden Brain podcast about building better habits, psychologists have found that shaping your environment to make new habits “as frictionless as possible” is a better way to change behaviour than relying on will power alone. Kind of a relief, if you think about it.
Psychology professor Wendy Wood shared the concept of mise en place as one way to start. Any composer, musician, writer, or artist knows how important it is to form positive practice habits that gradually improve skills and get things done. It turns out that mise en place has been helping me out for a while; I just didn’t know it had a name until now.
The idea comes from cooking school. Professional chefs learn how to set up their kitchens “to make it easy to make consistently great dishes each time,” says Wood. Novice chefs often want to fire up the stove and start cooking right away. But after trial and error, students realize that designing an easier workflow pays off in tastier dishes.
Mise en place means “putting everything in place” before beginning to cook. This way, chefs and cooks are using less brain power to make decisions. “Instead, they are cued by all of the implements and the food and the prepared items in front of them,” says Wood. “It makes it much easier for them to be consistent.”
“I was impressed with that as a metaphor for behaviour change, because if you structure the environment ahead of time, yes, it takes work, yes, it takes control – executive thinking and our conscious, thinking selves – but then we make it so much easier for us to sort of automate all of the other decisions.”
This leaves chefs (and composers, etc.) more time for creative flourishes.
Organizing my studio and office has become one of my favourite things to do during the holidays. Every time, I consider how best to arrange my tools.
My mise en place is part analog and part digital:
Pencils, pens, and staff paper are within reach at all times
Post-it notes are stocked
Manuscript pages are in folders by project
Laptop has enough hard drive space for a new recording project
Data cables are held in place behind where my laptop sits
Headphones are hanging from the left side of my desk and plugged in
All cables have slack
The stand-up desk extension is nearby
Phone is on do not disturb
My studio isn’t as complex as a kitchen serving hundreds of plates per night. A composer’s work is sometimes less tangible than cooking is. And I haven’t always had a dedicated space like I do now. But mise en place helps me look at my studio as a professional environment that is primed for creativity, big ideas, and seamless execution, whether I’m practicing a piano part, writing a choral piece, or producing a new track.