Comment by xyzzy123
4 days ago
Multiple small kids are incredibly disruptive to this. Just, a continuous "happening", constant out-of-context asks and "situations". 5 different things can happen between noticing or thinking of a task and being able to do anything about it. God help you if you have to go from one room to another because that in itself requires explanations (the best case is they quietly follow you to find out whats going on).
There are long stretches of my day where functionally, I have no free working memory at all. The main way I stay barely functional is by keeping memory "in the state of the world". The way I remember I promised to fix the tap today is by placing the tool kit prominently next to the tap, etc. As a last resort I try to write things down.
> keeping memory "in the state of the world"
This is what I do as well. If things aren't exactly where I left them, I'll not only never find them, but I'm likely to forget they ever existed.
Not likely to be a workable system in a home with children, then
No, which is the dilemma I find myself in
Checklists are the only way I survive. Todos yes, but also basic checklists of "don't forgets"
“Don’t fuck with my mise” (Anthony Bourdain’s paraphrase of a line chef co-worker)
mise is kitchen French for like the IDE of a cook’s station
The full term is "mise en place" and your analogy with the IDE is not far off, but there's an interesting nuance that's very useful to adopt when programming too. Mise en place is an ephemeral thing, you do it every time you start cooking and you look ahead at all the things you will need and arrange them in an optimal way for the steps you will take. It's an activity that encourages you to:
- always start from a clean state
- chunk your time
- give a bit of forethought to the work ahead
- do a little bit of workflow optimization
Over time, this is one habit that can have impressive compounding benefits.