Have you ever considered that the food you eat could be affecting your motivation levels, wellbeing and ability to focus?
I’ve been exploring the research in this area and I’ve got to say, the research is so compelling. It’s made me clean up my act.
I’ve ditched the junk food. I’ve packed the fridge full of fruits and vegetables. I’m cooking delicious plant-based meals.
I’m eating like an absolute champion. But this wasn’t always the case . . .
I grew up in an Italian family that had some wonderful food traditions.
Tomato Sauce Making Day was one of them.
My entire family (aunties, uncles, my cousins and their children) would come together and in a couple of days, we’d make hundreds of bottles of tomato passata.
When I tell people about this tradition, they automatically look impressed. They think:
“Wow! You must have grown up eating amazing Italian food all the time.”
Nope.
Sure, we had some delicious feasts for special occasions. But most of the time I ate processed junk foods.
My parents worked really hard on the family orchard. At the end of the day, they would come home exhausted. They had no energy to cook. And I didn’t know how to cook.
So we did what was easy and convenient: we ate take-away. And we ate a lot of it.
As a teenager, I had no idea that what I ate had anything to do with my poor mood, brain fog and low energy levels. No one ever told me that these things could be eliminated by making a few simple changes to my diet.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that I learnt how food could shape my ability to think and influence my mood.
The research is in. Eating certain foods can improve your wellbeing, motivation and brainpower. Let’s take a quick look at one of these research studies . . .
A study conducted by a research team at the University of Otago found even a small increase in fruit and vegetables could lead to rapid increases in motivation, vitality and flourishing. In this study, the researchers took a group of university students who didn’t consume many fruits and vegetables (they ate less than 3 serves of combined fruits and vegetables per day) and divided them into three groups:
Group 1: Control group – they didn’t change their diet.
Group 2: Ecological momentary intervention (EMI) group – they would receive two text messages a day for two weeks encouraging them to eat more fruit and vegetables, plus a $10 voucher to buy fruit and vegetables.
Group 3: Fruit and vegetable intervention (FVI) group – these students were given a bag of two weeks’ worth of fresh fruit and vegetables. They were told to consume at least two serves on top of what they usually ate each week.
Group 3 showed a significant improvement in their wellbeing (more than the other two groups). They showed increases in vitality, flourishing and motivation.
Here’s what was so incredible . . .
Group 3 (i.e. the participants who were given the big bag of fresh fruit and vegetables) were consuming only one extra serve of fruit and vegetables than the control group. Keep in mind that group 3 had only increased their consumption of fruit and vegetables by 1.2 serves on average from their baseline levels. But that extra serve seemed to make a big difference.
The researchers concluded:
“Despite both intervention groups reporting modestly higher and similar consumption of FV [fruits and vegetables] relative to control (3.7 vs 2.8 daily servings), only young adults who were given two weeks’ worth of FV showed improvements in their feelings of vitality, flourishing, and motivation. The short duration of our study indicated that FV intake translated into improved well-being quite rapidly.”
So why didn’t group 2 (the EMI group) show any improvements despite consuming a similar amount of fruit and vegetables as group 3?
The researchers stated:
“One possibility is that this difference might be due to lower control over type, quality, and preparation of fruit and vegetables eaten by the EMI group. The EMI group were free to choose whatever fruit and vegetables they liked, and when surveyed, we found that they were more likely to eat cooked vegetables in casseroles and mixed into their main meals. By contrast, for the FVI group, we chose high quality produce, which was mostly eaten raw (including the carrots, eaten as snacks). Some researchers have shown that more optimal psychological outcomes are associated with the consumption of fresh fruit and raw vegetables/salads, but not cooked vegetables.”
They also mentioned that the participants may have been annoyed by receiving the regular text message reminders and this may have “wiped out any gains in well-being”.
Overall, I find this study really interesting because it shows when you eat more fruit and vegetables you can see immediate psychological benefits. It also highlights the importance of easy access to good quality fruit and vegetables.
This is just one of many studies I came across that illustrates the powerful role food plays in impacting wellbeing.
When I was in my early twenties I spent thousands of dollars on personal development courses that promised greater happiness levels and to “unlock my hidden potential“. But not one of these courses talked about food nor did they give me the benefits that switching to a healthy plant-based diet did.
I’ve spent many hours exploring the research literature on food and the brain. What I’ve discovered has been life changing. Changing my diet turned out to be the cheapest and most effective pathway to greater happiness and wellbeing.
I want to share this knowledge with others. It seems crazy that this information isn’t widely known and accessible.
So this is why I’ve created the online course Eating Smart.
In this course, you’ll see that every time you sit down to eat you have an opportunity to improve your mood, ability to focus and brainpower.
Learning how to cook in a healthy way improved every aspect of my life: my energy levels, my ability to think clearly, my mood and memory all improved. The mental fog lifted. I became sharper.
I want this for you. So I’m sharing the research and my best strategies with you in this new course.
The Eating Smart program starts on the 19th October 2020. More details can be found here.
Share This:
Over the years, I’ve experimented with a range of weird and wonderful stress-busting activities, including yoga, pilates, meditation classes, floatation tanks, massages, acupuncture, and sound healings (to name a few).
I’ll be the first to admit that cash-grabbing wellness gurus and advertisers have sucked me in.
In our capitalist culture, we’re sold this idea that in order to relax, we need to spend big dollars. But I now realise that the best relaxation experiences are cheap or free.
I’ve created rituals around cooking that help me stay calm, grounded, and focused throughout the day.
These days, cooking is my number one way to relax. My kitchen is my happy place, and it can be your happy place, too.
Perhaps this sounds a bit strange. But hear me out.
I haven’t always found cooking to be relaxing or particularly enjoyable.
Being half Italian, I used to get involved with the occasional food tradition, such as tomato sauce-making day. But it wasn’t like I grew up with the delicious smells of homecooked food wafting through the house.
My teenage years and early twenties were filled with processed junk foods: a dizzying array of Hungry Jacks combos, greasy fish and chips, and takeaway meat lovers pizzas.
Cooking was a relaxation practice I stumbled upon much later in life.
Since upping my kitchen game and trading the expensive wellness activities for a sharp knife, solid chopping board, and fresh vegetables, my savings and confidence have grown.
To emerge from the kitchen in a calm and tranquil state, a few conditions have to be in place:
1. You cannot feel rushed
2. Your kitchen counter must be clean and clutter-free
3. You need a sharp knife to chop with
4. Your phone must be out of sight (like most things in life, it’s best not to multitask)
If these conditions are met, cooking can feel like a meditation or an empowering yoga class.
I’m not the only person who feels this way.
In the book ‘Uncook Yourself: A Ratbag’s Rules for Life’, Nat’s What I Reckon shares how he cooks his way through tough times. He writes:
“I reckon getting in the kitchen and un-cooking yourself from the tough moments in your head every now and then is a way better self-help routine than throwing five grand at some short-lived back pat from a cash grabbing blowhard at a self-help seminar just to tell you you’re not doing life right.”
One reason is you need to focus your mind.
When chopping with a sharp knife, you must pay attention to what you’re doing. If you get distracted, and I have (many times), you might pay the price with a cut to the finger.
Chopping is also a repetitive activity that delivers an immediate outcome. One minute, the bok choy is on the chopping board in full form; the next, it has been chopped and is ready for tonight’s stir-fry.
Cooking also requires you to slow down.
When you’re online, you tend to jump around in a frenzy. But when you’re cooking, you have to follow a recipe step-by-step. This requires focus. This focus helps to clear your mind.
Cooking also gives you a sense of control, power, and agency. As food journalist Michael Pollan says:
“Eating out breeds helplessness, dependence and ignorance, and eventually, it undermines any sense of responsibility.”
When you cook, you’re in control of the process (not some big corporate fast food company). Plus, compared to that commodified wellness experience, cooking is super cheap (all it costs is the price of a few ingredients).
It also produces a nourishing meal at the end. That meal will give you energy, help regulate your mood, and keep you calm and steady.
In the book ‘The Food Mood Connection’, Uma Naidoo argues that to decrease anxiety, you should pay attention to what you’re eating. She writes:
“A crucial part of battling anxiety is making sure your diet is full of foods that are calming and free of foods that put you on edge.”
Fast foods and highly processed foods. These foods (e.g., greasy hot chips and baked goods) are problematic because they lack fibre and the fragile micronutrients and phytochemicals needed for good brain health.
Naidoo recommends increasing your fibre intake by consuming more plants and whole foods, such as beans, brown rice, baked potatoes with the skin on, broccoli, pears, apples, and oats.
A few years ago, I delivered a talk called ‘Rediscovering the Ancient Art of Thrift’ at a local library. In my presentation, I shared the thrifty practice of avoiding eating out and cooking meals at home.
At this point in the presentation, an elderly gentleman put up his hand and said:
“But vegetables are expensive. Why not just get McDonald’s? It’s cheap, and there’s no cleaning up at the end.”
I immediately thought of a friend who, at the time, ate only McDonald’s (for breakfast, lunch, and dinner). His housemates had confided in me that his feet had developed a pungent odour.
Although my diet was far from perfect, I was concerned. If my friend kept going down this path, I could see him heading for serious trouble.
Fast forward a year: How was my friend doing?
He was not well.
He had put on a significant amount of weight and seemed depressed, rarely leaving his room except to get his next McDonald’s meal (back in those days, there was no Uber Eats).
I explained to this elderly gentleman in the library workshop:
“Maybe you’ll save a bit of time and money in the short term [buying the fast food], but eating processed food will cost you down the track. It will cost you in medical bills and poor health. Your quality of life will suffer.”
He nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t entirely convinced.
Until you’ve cut out the processed junk food, allowed a couple of weeks for your tastebuds to readjust, and developed the habit of home cooking, it’s easy to be sceptical. After all, we live in a world that values convenience. Opening an app, pressing a button, and having dinner delivered to your door in less than 20 minutes has some definite appeal.
But every time you order Uber Eats, you miss out on a valuable opportunity to practice slowing down and calming your mind. You also undermine your cooking skills.
If you haven’t developed the habit of cooking or cooking makes you feel anxious, there are a few simple things you can do to cultivate calm and confidence in the kitchen:
Cooking is a messy process. While I may start with a clean kitchen bench, it quickly becomes a mess. That’s how the process goes (I try to clean as I go).
It’s also okay to mess up a meal. Not every meal is going to be an absolute winner. In ‘The Four Hour Chef’, Tim Ferris encourages the reader to see meals that don’t work out as cheap cooking classes. Learn the lesson and move on.
When you think of cooking as one activity, it can feel overwhelming. I divide the cooking process into two stages:
1) Preparing the mise en place: chopping vegetables, taking out utensils, etc, and
2) Pulling it all together: cooking the dish.
In the morning, I take out all the ingredients for a dish so they are ready to go when I need to take a break from my work. I chop earlier in the day and cook the dish in the afternoon/early evening.
If I’m overwhelmed by the idea of chopping vegetables, I break it down to chopping just one vegetable at a time. I’ll say to myself:
“Just chop the capsicum. That’s all you need to do.”
It’s not fun chopping with a knife with a dull blade. A sharp knife combined with a lovely chopping board makes all the difference.
Learning basic chopping skills is a game changer. With the proper technique and a sharp knife, there’s no need to worry about cutting yourself. You can chop with ease.
I took a chopping skills course with the online cooking school Rouxbe, but you can find YouTube videos teaching you good chopping techniques.
You’re not running a restaurant. You don’t have to rush to get meals out to hungry customers. Take your time and enjoy the process of chopping each vegetable.
If approached with the right mindset, cooking can deliver a sense of calm and ground you in the present moment. You also get to experience the mental and physical benefits of a nourishing home-cooked meal. The bonus extra is saving a bit of money.
So, what are you waiting for? Pull out some ingredients and start cooking today.
But how much time do you actually have?
It’s hard to get a sense just by thinking “My exam is in three weeks.” After all, three weeks sounds like plenty of time, right?
Don’t be fooled. This is your brain playing tricks on you.
No one ever has a full three weeks (504 hours) to prepare for an exam. Thrown into the mix is time for sleep, getting ready for school or work, working on assignments, socialising with friends and family, etc. Plus, you usually have more than one exam to study for.
But we can forget this. And when we do, we end up procrastinating with our work and it piles up for our future selves to deal with.
What’s missing is that your brain needs clear visual feedback. It needs to have a sense of the big picture (i.e., all your commitments laid out in front of it).
By using a year-at-a-glance calendar.
Earlier this year, I printed out a massive year-at-a-glance calendar (A0 size).
I scheduled all my upcoming presentations, holidays, important events (e.g., birthdays), deadlines, etc., onto the calendar and placed it in a prime position where I couldn’t miss it.
This calendar has made all the difference. It grounds me in reality, helps me feel more in control of my schedule, and gives me clear visual feedback. It also makes me think twice before I agree to take on a new project.
In the past, whenever I’ve said yes to a new opportunity, I haven’t always been grounded in reality. Too many times, I’ve been unintentionally cruel to future Jane.
Let me explain . . .
Back in 2016, I was on the home stretch with my PhD. The path forward was clear. After years of struggling with my PhD, the end was in sight. I was on track to hand in my thesis in a few months’ time.
But then something happened that threw me off course (well, erm, I threw myself off course).
I was asked by a company to run a series of workshops. Without even thinking, I said “Yes! I’d love to!”. It seemed like a great opportunity. One that was too good to pass up.
When I shared the news with my PhD supervisor, she seemed to think differently. Her face said it all: a mixture of concern and confusion.
“Why did you say yes to this? Do you need the money? What about your PhD? You’re so close to finishing”, she said.
The truth was I didn’t need the money. I said yes because without having my other commitments staring me in the face, I had all the time in the world. I was engaging in magical (delusional) thinking. I fantasised about having superhuman capabilities and being able to do it all.
I was wrong. There were only so many hours in the day, and something had to give.
To cut a long story short, pretty quickly the magical thinking wore off, and I regretted taking on the job. I had burdened my future self with a ridiculous amount of work and unnecessary stress.
But worst of all, I had delayed handing in my thesis by several months. A few months might not sound like much in the big scheme of things. But when you’ve been plugging away at a PhD for seven years, every month becomes precious. I risked losing momentum.
If I could teleport back in time and place a year-at-a-glance calendar in my office space, I like to think that I would have prioritised my PhD over the shiny new opportunity.
I recently finished reading an excellent book called ‘The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain’ by Annie Murphy-Paul.
In this book, Annie explores nine principles for expanding our intelligence (note: these principles are not taught in schools). She argues that instead of pushing our brains to work harder and harder, we can use our bodies, relationships, and surrounding environment to boost our cognitive abilities.
In the chapter called “Thinking with the Space of Ideas”, she writes:
“Whenever possible, we should offload information, externalize it, move it out of our heads and into the world. It relieves us of the burden of keeping a host of details “in the mind,” thereby freeing up mental resources for more demanding tasks like problem solving and idea generation.”
After reading this book, I understood why a year-at-a-glance calendar can be such a powerful tool. Seeing all your projects and commitments in one glance allows you to think smarter and more strategically.
These calendars also help to orient you in time. You can see how much time you have between now and doing the things you need to do.
Your projects and deadlines stare back at you every day. There’s no escaping them.
Seeing your life in this way also helps you to plan and pinpoint busy periods.
Here’s an example . . .
This month, I have more presentations scheduled than usual. This means I need to manage my energy levels, prioritise sleep, and eat healthily.
But a quick glance at my calendar tells me I have a few ‘free’ days before all these talks begin. I can use this time to cook a few meals to pop in the fridge and freezer to make life a little easier during this busier period.
One of the worst things I can do when I get busy is order takeaway food and sacrifice sleep to work. I refuse to do it as it always backfires. If I’m functioning at half capacity, my talks and work will suffer.
These calendars can also provide useful information to help you manage your energy levels, reduce ridiculous workloads, and avoid burnout.
Earlier this year, there was a week when I delivered more talks than usual. During this week, I found myself taking 15-minute power naps between talks to recharge before the next one. Even with all these power naps, by the end of the week, I felt tired. I drew a tired little emoji face on my calendar to represent this.
That tired emoji face is a constant reminder: you have mental and physical limits. Don’t overdo it.
It’s important to find a calendar that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional for you. This means you probably can’t just go to the shops and pick something off the shelf.
You could order a hard copy calendar online, but when the year is already well underway who wants to potentially wait weeks for their calendar to arrive in the mail?
You can purchase a digital download online and take it to your local print shop on a USB stick. Some templates display the month as a long list of days; whereas other calendars group the month into weeks, with each week on a separate line (see examples below).
Alternatively, you could buy a monthly calendar, cut it up, and stick it together.
One of my friends suggested I try doing this. I gave it a shot, but my calendar looked like a failed arts and crafts project (with messy bits of tape plastered everywhere). Plus, the boxes were too small and cramped my style.
After some trial and error, I purchased a digital download from Etsy for $20AUD and printed it A0 size for $10AUD. All up, my calendar cost me $30AUD – money that was well spent.
The bottom line is you have to figure out what works for you and how much you’re willing to spend.
• Write on the calendar when all your exams, appointments, special events, and major projects will take place.
• If you don’t yet know the specific dates of each exam, note the week they begin and assume the worst-case scenario (your exams will be sooner rather than later).
• Consider laminating your calendar so you can use whiteboard markers on it.
• If laminating is too expensive, use sticky notes and washi tape instead.
• You can mount your calendar on core-flute material or foam board to give it a sturdier structure.
• Resist the urge to put every detail on your calendar. Focus on the big project deadlines, appointments, exams, etc. The details for what and when you work on each project can go into your weekly planner and/or on your to-do list.
• If you have the wall space, consider printing your calendar A0 size (841mm x 1189mm). You want plenty of space to write in each box.
In our noisy world where we are bombarded with endless opportunities, many of us would benefit from embracing analog tools like the year-at-a-glance calendar. These calendars help to ground us in reality and focus our minds on what matters.
If you have a lot going on in your world and find yourself saying “Yes!” to every shiny new opportunity that comes your way, do yourself a favour and create a year-at-a-glance calendar. Having your commitments stare you in the face every day is a simple but powerful way to live with greater focus and intentionality.
I recently watched a video of Gordan Ramsey cooking a ‘curry in a hurry’ (a butter chicken dish).
I was spellbound by the way Ramsey seamlessly cooked this dish. He was in flow and fully focused on the task of cooking the butter chicken.
What allowed him to whip up this dish plus a serving of rice in under 15 minutes?
Being organised helped a lot. Before he started cooking, chef Ramsey had all the ingredients and cooking utensils out on the bench, ready to go.
In chef’s speak, he had prepared the mise en place.
Mise en place is a culinary skill that can help us to study and work more efficiently. In this article, I explore this concept and how you can apply it to your life to help you stay calm, focused, and in control of your studies.
The mise en place is a French term that translates to “putting in place”. It means a place for everything and everything in its place.
Everything the chef needs is within arm’s reach. When it’s time to start cooking the dish, the chef knows where everything is. This allows the chef to focus on cooking the dish and stay calm and grounded under pressure.
In the book Kitchen Operations (a textbook for hospitality students and apprentice chefs), the authors write about the importance of being organised in the kitchen. They state:
“The ability to work in an organised manner is possibly the most important quality that anyone working in the preparation and service of food can demonstrate. You must develop this ability to complete the expected workload in the time available. Failure to be methodical in your approach will reduce efficiency and will lead to feelings of stress and frustration.”
The mise en place helps the chef avoid unnecessary stress and frustration.
Imagine the following scenario . . .
A chef starts cooking a pasta sauce.
The chef realises 10 minutes in that he is missing a key ingredient (tins of tomatoes).
The chef has to run to the shops to buy the tomatoes.
Chefs can’t afford to have that happen. They are time-pressured. They need to get meals out quickly to hungry customers.
The mise en place helps chefs avoid stressful situations like this. It can also help you decrease unnecessary stress, drama, and frustration associated with homework and study.
Before starting your work, set yourself up with everything you need to complete the task.
Think of this as the study desk mise en place. Ideally, you want to have a dedicated study space where everything is already set up. This saves you time, as you don’t have to set things up and pack things away after each study session.
But your desk isn’t the only space you can set up and prepare. In the world of study, you have other spaces you need to manage (e.g., a computer, school bag, pencil case, and locker). With each of these spaces, you need to ask:
“What items do I need in this space for my work to flow smoothly?”
It also helps to ask:
“What items don’t I want in this space?”
Just like a chef doesn’t want cockroaches, cats, and rats running around the kitchen and restaurant (or a visit from the local health inspector), there are things you want to keep out of your study space.
Remove anything that throws you off your game (i.e., makes you feel bad, distracted, overwhelmed, and upset) from your study space.
Here’s my list of things I want to keep out of my study space:
• My smartphone
• Long to-do lists
• Visual clutter
The point is to remove any friction points from your environment (anything that will slow you down and make it difficult to do your work).
The mental mise en place cannot be overlooked. This is the mental preparation part of the study process.
Ask yourself:
What must I do to mentally prepare myself for deep work/study?
Most of us can’t just scroll on our social media feed for an hour and launch straight into doing focused study. We need to get into the right headspace.
To be clear, I don’t mean you need to feel motivated, inspired, or in the right mood to study. Too often, we wait for motivation to strike, and it never comes. However, it certainly helps to be calm, focused, and grounded.
My mental preparation for the workday starts the evening before. Too many late nights have taught me that to wake up feeling calm and grounded, I need to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
When I wake up, I protect this mental calm by:
• Going for a walk or lifting heavy weights
• Doing a mini meditation (usually 3-5 minutes)
• Eating a healthy breakfast
• Avoiding checking my email and touching my computer first thing
• Journaling or mind mapping with pen and paper
I stay away from screens for as long as possible. This is essential for cultivating a calm mental state where I feel proactive and in control of my day.
I know I’m in trouble if I skip too many of the things on the list and start the day by checking my email. It becomes much more challenging to focus and get things done.
What is a pest of the mind?
It is anything that overstimulates the mind and leaves one feeling frenzied, scattered, and/or jangled.
Here’s the thing about learning information at a deep level: it requires you to slow down. You cannot rush it, like a 15-minute butter chicken dish.
But we engage with people, places, and things on a daily basis that speed up our thinking. In this overstimulated, wired mental state, learning feels like a hard slog.
Here’s a tip: start to notice the things that leave you feeling overstimulated. It can be incredibly liberating to cut back on these things or eliminate them completely from your life.
I am constantly tweaking my workspace and experimenting with different tools to help me click into a state of flow with my work. Here are some tools that I’m currently enjoying having as part of my study mise en place:
Technically, this is a gaming device that allows gamers who stream to switch scenes, adjust audio, etc at the tap of a button. I’m not a gamer, but I use my Stream deck to get started with various tasks and projects I feel resistance towards.
Instead of thinking, “Where is this file located? How do I get to it?” I tap a button on the Stream deck and it opens the file up. I tap another button, and it opens an application I frequently use.
No more frustrating clicking through numerous folders trying to find the document I need! The Stream deck helps to remove a big mental barrier and kick-start the work process with ease.
Stream decks aren’t cheap but if you can find one secondhand or on special like I did, they are well worth it.
Staying hydrated is super important. I fill a big jug with water every morning and place it on my desk with a glass. If water is within arm’s reach and I can see it, I find myself taking regular sips throughout the day.
I used nasty, cheap pens for years. Being a sucker for free stuff, I collected free pens at career expos and university open days. Without even realising it, these pens caused me a great deal of frustration and irritation.
These days, when it comes to pens, I don’t mess around with junk. There’s one pen I love using: the uniball signo (0.7). It’s a gel pen (you can find them at Officeworks). Writing with this pen is an absolute pleasure.
As Kevin Kelly says:
“Take note if you find yourself wondering “Where is my good knife?” or “Where is my good pen?” That means you have bad ones. Get rid of those.”
It’s super handy to have a notepad to jot down ideas and random thoughts as they arise. I recently discovered Rhodia notepads (a recommendation by The Pen Addict, Brad Dowdy). Writing on this paper feels like writing on butter!
Whenever I notice I’m procrastinating, I’ll set my timer for 10 minutes and say, “All I need to do is 10 minutes on this task. That’s all. Just 10 minutes”. I set the timer and away I go.
Other times, when my workspace looks like a mess, I’ll set a timer for 3 minutes and spend that time getting things back in order.
My planner tells me what to do and when to do it. For the last 6 weeks, I have been experimenting with Cal Newport’s time blocking method (planning my day in hourly blocks). It sounds torturous, but it’s strangely liberating.
When I open my planner, I can see what is happening for the week, but I don’t have a sense of the bigger picture. This is why I printed out a massive (A0 size) year-in-a-glance planner to schedule all my presentations, holiday breaks, special events, etc.
Having this calendar makes me feel more in control of my life. I can see when I have busy periods of presenting and when I need to balance those periods with extra rest time to sustain myself. I can also see events and deadlines relatively to where I am now.
These are just a few things I love having in my study/work mise en place. But we’re all different, so you need to figure out what works best for you.
When I recently asked a group of high school students what items they would need in their study mise en place, here’s what they came up with:
• Snacks
• Phone
• Pencil case
• Squishmallows
The first three suggestions didn’t surprise me, but the squishmallows sure did (the students were shocked that I’d never heard of a squishmallow before). I had to google them (they are soft toys).
But I get it.
A squishmallow is fun.
It’s comforting.
It makes you feel good.
If something makes you feel good, go put it on your desk. Because if you feel good, it will be easier to think and learn.
The mise en place is a skill that can help all of us (not just chefs) focus on the task at hand. The point is you need to make your study mise en place work for you. You need to find the combination of ingredients that hits the spot.
Like a top chef has their favourite chopping knife, you’ll have your favourite pen. Spend some time experimenting with various tools and different work setups. By creating a more streamlined and organised study space, you’ll get that time back. Plus, you’ll find it’s much easier to get going and keep going with your work.
Dr Jane Genovese delivers interactive sessions on learning to learn, combating procrastination, exam preparation, how to focus in the age of distraction, habit formation and much, much more!
Get FREE study and life strategies by signing up to our newsletter:
© 2024 Learning Fundamentals
