Why you should avoid starting from scratch, even for small projects

Stunned by the mechanical noise, I looked up the steep hill. My grandfather’s tractor was rolling down silently, full speed, out of control. With a quick maneuver that could only come from his long experience, he turned the wheels fully to the right, then to the left. Like a big, fat, snake, the tractor slid to the left, then to the right, sunk into the ground with all its weight, then stopped.

The hills around, very steep, had been terraced 50 or 70 years before. Long lanes of vine spiraled around them. The oxcarts were much easier to pull on this almost flat ground (climbing the hill’s slope straight ahead would have been a death warrant). But this hill had never been terraced, never been prepared for manual or mechanical work.

Terraces — Preparing the field can take a lot of time and energy, regardless the task size. Actually the size is important, as some tasks could look like mountains. But any trip begins with a first step.

Without preparation, a restart is just a new start

Like Sisyphus finding his rock down the mountain every day, without preparation, we lose all the inertia we gained with yesterday’s sweat. To avoid this, we must transform pauses in terraces.

A bookmark is enough to retrieve the last page read before going to sleep. To prepare the next step, we must find a way specific to each task to mark the current or the next step. For those of us working with computers, the notebook is your friend (paper or digital). Him, and the reflex to properly put aside the work.

Put aside your work so that you can continue it later

In a restaurant, preparing the lunch dishes doesn’t start at noon. The chef and his team need to prepare the ingredients well before. They can buy fresh products at the local market early in the morning or the day before. Vegetables need to be peeled in the morning. Sometimes the meat must be
marinated the evening before.

It’s quite probable the task you prepare to do doesn’t really start now. We rarely begin a sparkling new project, and even then we reuse prior ideas, or already existing materials and parts. But when exactly do we need to prepare a start then?

Stop only after preparing the next step

The best moment to prepare a painter’s work it’s the evening before, before stopping, by cleaning brushes and closing color tubes. The best moment to prepare the next step is just before stopping the previous one.

This doesn’t mean cleaning up the desk and tidying up everything. Artist working spaces sometimes resemble a bazaar, with paintings in different stages hanging around, chairs, and lights scattered all over the place. This may look chaotic to the visitor’s eye, but there is a logic behind it all.

Some finished paintings hang around to dry, some are stored, and some were sent to be framed. Color tubes and brushes are there where they are needed tomorrow, besides the painting for which they were chosen. And they were placed there the last time the artist worked on that specific canvas.

Preparing the next step at each break or pause

That must seem exaggerated and too difficult, but preparing the next step is the mark of someone experienced and organized. Write down the things to remember, the main points, but also specific details which may be difficult to recall.

Use a title or a code for each project, or even a different color. Or start each line with the project name. In any case, reserve a space to mark the status of each task. Leave a left-side white space to annotate each task:

[ ] to do
[v] done
[x] to drop

Noter le soir qu’on a travaillé toute la journée sur un projet c’est bien, mais sans les détails nous ne saurons plus jamais ce qu’on a fait exactement (et pour combien de temps). Bon courage pour se rappeler si on a travaillé avec un tel collègue ce jour, si on avait commencé ou fini telle tâche, ou si on avait été tellement interrompu, au point de pas avancer du tout de la journée.

Revenir plus tard sur les notes vous aidera à retrouver le contexte et les détails particuliers de vos projets. Mais ne mettez pas les notes trop loin de votre clavier.

Preparation needs to be ready to use in the right place

En télétravail depuis quelques semaines déjà, je cherche parfois mon cahier, laissé au bureau au début du confinement. Depuis, j’ai commencé un nouveau, un numérique cette fois-ci, pour ne plus l’oublier. Et pour le retrouver au bureau après le confinement, je l’ai synchronisé sur chaque ordinateur que j’utilise (les outils comme Dropbox ou OneDrive sont bien pratiques pour cela).

But all these preparations take too much time!

C’est vrai, ça prends du temps de noter ce qu’on vient de faire et ce qu’on devrait faire juste après. Mais ça prends aussi du temps à se replonger dans le projet, dans le document. J’étais où ? Je voulais faire quoi ?

Depuis récemment Word propose une action pour aller à la dernière position connue. C’est un tout petit pas, mais c’est bien plus rapide que de chercher soi-même !

Oui, se préparer demande un certain temps. Mais avec l’expérience, les notes s’améliorent et les habitudes s’installent, au point ou nous partons presque jamais de zéro.

The habit to prepare is critical to avoid starting from scratch every day, every project

Avec le temps et l’exercice, la préparation devient une routine. Nous passons de moins en moins de temps pour se préparer.

Les vignes, les rizières et autres cultures sont possibles sur les hautes collines seulement si elles ont été terrassées auparavant. Quel travail monumental, quels résultats !

Nous avons seulement besoin de préparer la prochaine étape de notre projet, ce n’est pas si difficile en comparaison !

Vineyards, rice, and other cultures on steep hills are possible and much easier to work on if the hills are terraced first. The Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras are a world-famous example, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site, acknowledging the technique and the know-how required to do such massive landscape work.