My Technique Is Unstoppable

Hey! How are you?

I'm sitting down to write this week's edition of Mundi right after finishing one of my favorite tasks: cooking bacon.

My Bacon Technique Is Unstoppable

I prefer to cook bacon in the oven, a method I first learned working in a commercial kitchen for a summer in college. I cooked a tremendous amount of bacon and scrambled eggs on the breakfast shift. Later, I managed to level up and moved on to cooking made-to-order omelettes at an outdoor omelette bar alongside my future wife, which was a terrific bonding experience.

There's lots of reasons to like cooking bacon in the oven, but I want to talk about it because it's fresh in my memory just how satisfying I find the process, though I think the end result is nice too. I like bacon! But the process is satisfying in and of itself. I am in the moment enjoying attending to only what is in front of me. At every step I have a particular technique I use that brings me nano-joys simply to focus on in the moment, with no distraction. These techniques are self-developed or learned from others, and I derive different kinds of satisfaction from each type.

Satisfaction in what I have developed myself (you clever devil, you!), and satisfaction in the memories of where and how I learned a technique from a wise guide.

I recall the technique used in the commercial kitchen, of elevating the bacon up on a rack over a sheet pan, learned from a very patient and kind executive chef (who I learned many, many great techniques from). I deploy the technique I developed of folding 2 sheets of foil together just so such that no oil or fat can leak into the pan. I lay the bacon bought from the local farmers market out using a technique that forms a pattern I find most efficient and visually satisfying (I am a designer after all!). I have a very particular, almost more-art-than-science, technique for starting our finicky Italian gas oven named Sofia... which now works every time when finessed in just the right way. And so on.

Throughout I try to think of nothing else, avoid distraction, perform these techniques, and find opportunities to improve and develop new ones.

Must Be Nice 🙄

I know, I know.

That's so great that you have the time and space to do that. Must be nice!

I'm eye rolling a bit too. But hear me out. I think this is something that's really important to recapture in lives that have become increasingly fragmented with distraction and diffuse omnidirectional calls for attention. I think of myself as someone who's busy and tries to accomplish a lot every day. I have a family. I have hobbies and side gigs. I have causes I care about that I try to contribute my utmost to. I have friends I enjoy spending time with.

I think this is more about, no matter how much you have in your life, focusing your attention productively and joyfully. I think we need that, more than ever. I certainly need it in order to be a better parent to my two boys, and partner to my wife. This is my method for un-hijacking my brain, away from the background buzz and oh-so-carefully-designed products that seek to create habits, whether those habits are helping me thrive as a whole human being or not.

This is my technique. It's not necessarily special or groundbreaking, but it works for me:

I try and mentally collapse my whole world into nothing but the doing of the thing in front of me, and to say this is it, this is my whole world right now, attend to how well it is done, celebrate how well it is done.

For me, the most important part is celebrating in the moment of doing, the pride and satisfaction derived from doing the small part of the process just so in a way that I think is the way, for me. A series of techniques, chained together, each a moment of focus that has its own rewards. The joy of sustained micro-mono-tasking? I love doing a small thing well, and designing or learning new ways of doing small things well. Perhaps the feeling is similar to r/oddlysatisfying/? Or to the feeling of watching animations like this from Andreas Wannerstedt:

A similar mindset has also helped me attend to other people in a more complete way, so it's clear that I am in the moment with them and focused on what they are doing, and only them. It has helped me accomplish more without adding a great deal of structure or process. I can't claim to always be in this flow, not by a long shot, nor am I living free of distraction. I wander sometimes, in really obvious ways. I'm sorry if you've been on the receiving end of that during a Zoom call 😬.

But it's uplifted me and helped me be happier with what I've accomplished every day. I can look back to at least one thing and say, "Yeah, that was a really sweet technique."

Muri, muda and mura

Traditional Japanese craftsmanship creates excellence by trimming away the “3 Mus.” Muri is activity that is not reasonable or overly burdensome in relation to the task. Learning to apply just the right amount of force with a wrench is an example of weeding out muri. Muda is an activity that is wasteful and doesn’t add value. The master’s movements show an economy of motion that preserve his stamina so that he can be more productive than his young apprentices, who still show muda, wasted effort. Mura is inconsistency of process leading to uneven results. There is a right and wrong way to do every task. Those of you who went to school in Japan and had the job of cleaning the floors will know that there is one right way to fold, wipe, rinse, wring and store cleaning rags

Thanks Japan Intercultural Consulting!

As I said, I don't think what I'm sharing here is uniquely my own, having some special wisdom that others have not shared before me. There are similar ideas and cultural wisdom relating to mindfulness and focus on method from all around the world, including the Japanese concept of monozukuri. Craftsmanship is another useful concept, but one I find that puts a lot of focus on end result rather than equal weight on result and mindfulness of method.

Whatever you may call it, doesn't it feel SO GOOD to find or develop a technique, a way of doing just so that feels like you've unlocked a small secret of the universe? Honed through experience so all unnecessary elements fall away and it just hums in its elegance and efficiency? Then to put that technique to use, and to attend to its application ever so closely, not mindlessly but mindfully?

Nothing better in my opinion.

I hope you can take this idea of joy-in-technique as inspiration for cutting out distraction and focusing on what matters in the moment in your life. If you have other ways of doing something similar I would love to hear about them!

My Closing Technique Is Also Unstoppable

I want to leave on a suggestion and a question.

My suggestion is this: products that leave room for their users to create techniques are products that respect humans more fully. Design room for techniques, and for honing them. How? Plan for the path to superuserdom! Offer different modalities to accomplish things in more efficient and elegant or convoluted-but-funny ways.

Encourage people move on from hunting and pecking in menus and poking buttons so they can understand the lay of the land. Plan for how they can use keyboard shortcuts, voice commands, markdown, prompts, and more. Open up parts of your product for tinkering, so that people can create tools on top to perform emergent tasks that you never originally planned for. Scratch the itch that people have for finding satisfaction in honing techniques and you are actually building a deeper relationship with them!

My question is this: What is your G.O.A.T Absolute Club Banger technique? No matter how big, small, innocuous or profound, I want to hear about it!

Because of the interesting times we live in, here are my disclaimers for this newsletter:

Take these with whatever seriousness you choose 😀

If you wanna learn more about what this newsletter is all about so you can judiciously decide how to spend your valuable attention capital, check out the first edition.