My mise en place took 3 hours more until I stopped overthinking it

Honestly, I spent a full service Saturday chasing 15 minute prep times until I timed myself in Fort Worth and realized I was double checking every cut. Ngl, just trusting my knife work saved me 2 hours, but has anyone else found that slowing down speeds things up in the long run?

2 comments

2 Comments

elizabetha9215d ago

Oh man, that hits home. I used to line up every pepper slice next to the others like I was building a tiny vegetable museum. Then one Tuesday I just said forget it and started chopping without the ruler in my head, and my prep time dropped by half. But the weird thing is, the food came out better too because I was actually paying attention to the veggies instead of obsessing over perfect squares. Now I do sort of a half speed check at the start to get my rhythm, then I let my hands do their thing. It's like my brain gets in the way if I think too hard, so I just let it wander to other stuff while my knife does the work. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, but only if you stop measuring every damn thing.

alicec8615d ago

Notice how nobody talks about the cleanup side of things. All that careful slicing means you're probably staring at the board while it's dirty too, so you wash it mid-prep and lose even more time. Let the mess happen, deal with it after, way less stress.