Chasing Excellence, Grind of Working in a Kitchen and My 2022 Playbook
4.2022 Edition
What's up Reader?
Ben Bergeron has this great book called Chasing Excellence where he blew my mind with this expansion.
He says there’s a progression of accountability based on how you frame situations:
- Victim
- Pessimist
- Optimist
- Realist
- Curious Opportunist
I used to think I had reached the “peak” by calling myself an Optimist. However, I think we can all think of an example of the “delusional” Optimist.
The person who sees the ship sinking but still tells you that “isn’t it great to be on a boat right now!?”
How can we move beyond this?
Being a “Realist” has its benefits, but it’s difficult to “rally the troops” or lead a team when you’re constantly role-playing potential scenarios. It can be distracting. Your energy is spent in hypotheticals, and contingency planning can only get you so far.
Ben argues that the goal should be to become a Curious Opportunist.
The person that asks, “huh, that’s interesting that happened...where can we improve for next time?”
The team member who questions, “that didn’t quite go as planned...did we think through everything as thoroughly as we could have?”
The leader who sees an increase in difficulty ahead and asks, “how does our process need to change to accommodate this?”
This combines the best of both worlds. You maintain an Optimistic attitude that there are opportunities everywhere. However, you don’t sweep problems under the rug, because you’re being a Realist about potential variables and outcomes.
I teach more about this with kitchen-related examples in The Demi Skills Course, which begins on February 7th! Shoutout to the almost 100 of you folks that are currently in the 5-Day-Kitchen-Productivity Challenge
Notice: I didn’t even give “Victim” or “Pessimist” air-time in this monologue...they aren’t worth your time 😉
Highlights from the week to share 💥
To Read 📚
‘It’s Just a Nightmare That’s Not Going to End’ - Has the restaurant industry lost it’s hope amidst alarmingly fast-spreading Omicron variant? “I did not fucking see this coming at all,” says chef Mourad Lahlou. “I thought we were over the hump. It’s just a nightmare that’s not going to end.” Restaurant owners are worried about the safety of their staff and customers. However, this time there is a “pandemic playbook” to work from.
How the Pandemic Knocked Chefs Off Their Pedestal - The pandemic changed the industry and it gave us the opportunity to regrow our food culture. In the pre-pandemic world, cooks at Michelin-starred kitchens would get treated and paid horribly (and sometimes even illegally), and yet some will say that they are grateful for these harsh conditions, turning them into who they are today. A quote from the book that you might enjoy: “I never again want to hear about how great a chef is unless it’s about how great an employer they are.”
I had a chance to interview Corey for the Emulsion Podcast. Watch the full episode on YouTube, or listen to the the audio-only version.
To Binge 📺
Phillip Frankland Lee on the Grind of Working in a Kitchen - Phillip Frankland Lee is a restaurateur, chef and co-owner of Scratch Restaurants Group. He started his career at the age of 18 as a dishwasher, quickly rose from the ranks and was 25 when he opened his first solo restaurant.
Adam Ragusea on YouTube - Adam creates videos about food recipes, food science and culinary culture. His journey as a content creator started when he gave himself an assignment to create cooking videos, in order to improve his editing and shooting skills.
To Peep 👀
Combustion Smart Thermometer - Folks who have been subscribed for a while might remember me shouting this project out last year...well, they’re finally launching soon! We’re just 2 email sign ups away from making me a beta tester for this project, so if you’d like to see this reviewed, drop in your email and we’ll see what happens 🌡
Using “Heard” in Non-Kitchen Settings - Check out this thread and some other uses for "Kitchen Lingo". 👇
January 15th 2022
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ICYMI
My 2022 Playbook - Lessons Learned, Tips, Readings, and Goals for the Year Ahead - Of the over 55+ lessons, tactics, and practices I shared in previous year’s Playbook, I’m still doing 85%+ of them on my day-to-day. Keeping that in mind, we can spend this Playbook talking about more finds, habits, and practices that I’m adding on...
Current experiment I'm running 🧪
This one is building on last week’s experiment and might help some of you that are feeling bottlenecked or bogged down. I’ve added a 1-hour, daily writing goal to my calendar.
This is a: headphones on, pomodoro timer on, one-app full-screen, focused time where I don’t answer texts, Slack messages, or phone calls. I’m writing this during one right now 😎
And it arose from me realizing that I had SO MANY writing tasks that needed my attention, but split up into individual tasks, they would always get pushed out or de-prioritized. I’m using a lot of the work that Cal Newport has done on time blocking to solve for this.
There’s no goal for the writing block - just write. It can be emails, scripts for videos, this newsletter, podcast questions for an upcoming guest...a shocking amount of my work life is writing. And because I’m not used to it, I need to white-glove my schedule because this doesn’t come naturally. Some of you might remember that I used to tell myself in high school that “I’m a horrible writer”.
If you’re seeing patterns in frequently-botched tasks, “dropped balls”, or ways that you’re bottlenecking your team throughout your week, how can you carve out focused time for yourself? Give it a try this week to create a "dish writing" block. A "replying to comments" block, or a "
Quote I'm Pondering 🤔
Thanks for reading,
👊Justin
Surprise Throwback: How to Talk About Food- An Intermezzo - I believe talking about food can be one of your greatest strengths as a chef, and conversely one of the biggest downfalls that causes a lot of problems! This episode seeks to highlight some great examples of food writing/communication, why I think it's important, my 4 pillars of great food educating, and a quick rant on some bad examples.
