I’ve heard of the concept of mise en place, which is French for “putting in place” or “everything in it’s place.” While I’m not a culinary artist, I appreciate increasingly appreciate, as a parent of three young children, the importance of investing energy in having a place for things, and carving out time to fight against the never-ending slide towards chaos #entropy.

This includes physical organization, like my messy desk, and where kids’ toys and books go, as well as digital organization like emails, text messages, audible queues, and open browser tabs on my phone and laptop. I have no interest in trying to get to inbox zero or equivalent on other systems, but I do desire to have clear systems, like:

• How do I track what I want to read next? I keep a dedicated bookshelf for my top reading priorities
• How do I keep track of my todo list? Trello is great!
• How do I keep track of unresolved emails? I’m mark them unread until they’re resolved, and then *gasp* leave them in the inbox for all eternity (no sub-folders, no archiving)
• Where do new magazines go in the house? I recently centralized the stack, so it doesn’t feel like they’re attacking me from 5 stacks throughout the house