Software Mise En Place
For me, "Mise en place", has nothing to do with chopping everything beforehand and in fact that is completely different from how I cook and develop software. Chopping everything at the start seems like it takes longer.<p>I think Mise en place can mean different things to different people. The way I was taught it was to have everything "in place" before you start. Literally you gather all the ingredients in one place (on a metal tray) before you start cooking. This has three main benefits:
1) you make sure you have everything you need;
2) you don't forget to add anything as you go because at the end your tray should be empty;
3) you don't mess up timings by searching for something while you're cooking that you can't find;
Thus I use Mise en place, but I don't chop everything at the start. I chop the onion and then start cooking it, and then chop the other ingredients. Chopping everything else upfront would make the process slower.<p>Similarly in software development I often save simple tasks for when I need mental relief from a hard task. Working on a simple task can often give you the space you need for your brain to solve the hard task it's working on in the background.<p>Doing all the simple tasks up front does not seem to me like a good approach to cooking or software development, but making sure you know what all the ingredients are and have them all ready, does.