PUT IN PLACE
It’s the first thing they teach you in chef school: a system called mise-en-place, or literally, “put in place.” It’s a French phrase that means to gather and arrange the ingredients and tools needed for cooking.
THE TEN THOUSAND HOUR THING
Everybody’s heard about how putting in 10,000 hours working on a particular skill-set pretty much “guarantees” that you will be very good at using those skills. The number makes the “rule” easy to remember. It’s so nice and round. It’s also more than a little intimidating! Ten thousand hours apparently translates to about ten years, after all, and I’m not sure whether that includes time for eating, sleeping and doing all of the other stuff humans do.