Hello. Welcome along to another edition of Adventures...

This monthly email digest is here to give you a few new ways to see, learn, and do differently. Each edition collates ideas from the worlds of education, entrepreneurship, entertainment, and beyond. It’s put together by me, Howard.

Let’s get into it…

B is for Brunch

A few months before the turn of the millennium, an edition of The New Yorker magazine included an article by a local chef.

Of course, this wasn’t any old article - or any old chef.

However, it’s highly unlikely the magazine’s editors knew what was going to happen next. Even less so the author.

‘Don’t Eat Before Reading This’ shared gory details of butter, blood, bared knives, and the most dreaded b of all: brunch.

A decade later and its author had become a cult hero: touring the world with no reservations; exploring the parts unknown. He was renowned for his rock ‘n’ roll attitude and acerbic wit; a desire to dive deep into culinary cultures; and a willingness to try anything from pig’s trotters to heroin.

The day after he passed away, his home city of New York had a strange feeling in the air.

But beyond his globetrotting, freewheeling vibe, Anthony Bourdain was still anchored to the same core tenet as chefs the world over.

Three simple words: mise-en-place.

Merely do it

Roughly translated as ‘putting in place’, mise-en-place is most commonly thought of as prepping ingredients before a kitchen service starts.

But there’s more to the mise than just chopping celery and priming purees.

As a noun, mise-en-place is the arrangement of a cook’s tools and workstation.

It’s also a verb: the process of preparing.

And for many, the mise is a state of mind. In fact, Bourdain himself proclaimed:

Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks….do not f**k with the ‘meez.

(I’m not sure that last bit appears in many holy scriptures)

The mise-en-place encourages economy of movement; precise actions; and the hallowed flow state. It allows you to just cook. No story, no narrative. No flailing or flustering. Merely do it.

The core of mise-en-place is in always returning to the most basic of steps. Ingredients ready and measured; each tool laid out for the most effective and efficient use.

But the mise isn’t just for the kitchen.

Work Clean

Even after winning a dozen majors, legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus would go back to what was effectively his own mise-en-place. The first things he did with his trainer were to prepare the clubs; size up the range; check the foot positions. Then they’d just practice the swing. Nothing more.

Closer to home, many of my disputes could have been resolved by mise-en-place. There are the obvious spousal skirmishes in the kitchen, but also the disputes with myself. My mise-en-place aids newsletter writing, video production, and never-ending visa applications (don’t ask…).

After trying all kinds of productivity systems and tools, two recent book purchases have confirmed mise-en-place as my way forward.

The first is obvious: ‘Work Clean’ by Dan Charnas explores how the chef’s mise-en-place can enter our working lives, whichever industry we’re operating in.

The second book is Yotam Ottolenghi’s Simple. Its dozens of colour-coded recipes, all clean, quick and healthy, make seemingly boring ingredients and methods feel magical. Mealtime skirmishes avoided.

Other than practicing our mise-en-place, and getting good at Simple, it’s worth us remembering that one thing can change our trajectory forever.

It could be a song, a dish, a conversation, or - like Anthony Bourdain’s first outing in The New Yorker - an article.

Of course, we don’t know which thing it’s going to be. So the best bet is to practice getting our station clean, ingredients prepped, and the pans hot.

Then merely do it. Just cook.

As always, Adventures… is a two-way street. I’d love to know what’s got your attention right now. Just hit reply.

Howard

Go ahead, make my day

I want this monthly email to be one of your favourites. You get enough email as it is, and frankly, this thing takes me a while to put together, so I may as well make it good.

To aid this mission, I’m looking to chat with a few intrepid subscribers like you. If you can spare 20 mins for me to ask you some questions about the kind of Adventures… you want then please hit this link. I’d really appreciate it.

Ok, back to our scheduled programming…

01: Career Fuel

Build a business, not an audience: The problem with reductive remixing, and following the advice of building an audience at all costs.

Distinguishing between Hobbies, Jobs, Careers, and Vocations: Elizabeth Gilbert has a great vibe. The stuff in here is seemingly common sense, but like all common sense, it’s not common. So nice, I watched it twice.

The Soul of the Creator Economy: A great bit by Paul Millerd on why the Creator Economy needs more Creator, not just Economy. Paul has a knack for crafting stuff that’s exactly what I want to say, but better. He’s so good I’ll even forgive him for being a management consultant.

Fresh episodes on the ‘Under the Current’ podcast this month span:

• how to set up an artist residency in Chile
• building community in startups and freestyle rap
• why you should never charge hourly for your work; and
• a multiple Emmy-award-winning writer and producer

02: Learning <> Doing

Reflections on the future of learning: Someone recently described Clubhouse as “LinkedIn with a coke habit”. Ouch. Here’s a quick bit from me reflecting on a Clubhouse session I attended on the future of learning - and in particular, cohort-based-courses.

Opportunity for Adventure: creating small 'magic circle' learning groups to share ideas, techniques, and secrets

Visual Thinking School: In this excellent primer on how to draw to clarify your thinking, one sentence immediately jumped out at me: If your ideas can’t be drawn, they can’t be done. I’ve been meaning to bring out the notebook and the whiteboard again. All part of the mise-en-place.

Creativity isn’t Talent - it’s a Skill: Here’s art director Anthony Jones showing how tools and practice can unlock creativity. It’s a nifty bit of product marketing for Adobe, and Jones has a really nice teaching style.

03: Unclassified

(aka Innovation/Tech/Metaverse and other trendtastic stuff)

Unreal’s Metahuman Creator: Regular readers will know I love the metagame. It’s hard to understate what a big deal this news from Unreal is, especially when you throw a Tom Cruise deep fake in there for good (bad) measure

Opportunity for Adventure: the list of opportunities here is gigantic, exciting, and terrifying in equal measure. What do you make of it?

Andy Apps: A fresh approach to digitial utilities. New spins on old things… new wine on old oak… making more of the mundane. Sound familiar?

How to make a rave anthem: Here’s how Liam Howlett made a notorious Prodigy track.. except this demo is made in modern digital studio kit, whereas Liam was using mid 90s hardware gear. It’s the clearest proof possible of the creative and technical skill involved in sampling. Sidenote: I’m very much looking forward to The Prodigy documentary now slated for production.

Opportunity for Adventure: creating better ways to help people understand and articulate different skills

04: Jukebox

Front: Calibre - Resident Advisor mix

I find this chap fascinating. He has an incredibly simple style but creates amazing results from so few elements. The Yotam Ottolenghi of electronic music, perhaps. This new mix effortlessly spans ambient, dubstep, deep house, and drum & bass.

Fun fact: I booked Calibre for one of his earliest DJ gigs back in June 2003. I was 20, and embarrassingly gauche. Naturally, I thought I was the opposite.

Middle: Daft Punk - Homework

It’s hard not to include some Daft Punk this month. A few months after I started working at Primary they released ‘Get Lucky’. Overnight, 90% of the calls to an office representing 600+ artists were Daft Punk booking enquiries (spoiler: the number of gigs they accepted in that period: zero).

Here’s a BBC Radio 1 mix spanning some highlights from their catalogue, but for me the first album is still the best (Revolution 909 was my go-to)

Back: Stevie Wonder’s hot streak

My wife Jacinta loves Stevie (come to think of it, who doesn’t?). Calling his mid-70s streak ‘hot’ is an understatement. As this piece suggests:

“Classic period” is the polite phrase for the five-year span that Stevie spent ferociously dunking on the entire history of popular music.

I can only guess this kind of streak comes about from the perfect storm of talent, skill, hard work, and environment.

05: Footnotes

Other things I’ve been up to since last time…

• Watching ‘Undercover’: A Belgian/Dutch crime drama involving a campsite, several million Ecstasy tablets, a faux Wild West horse ranch, and dodgy leather jackets. Yes, you read that correctly
• Being reminded of facial hair consistency issues when recording videos over the course of a few days
• Joining a writing community: the results obviously aren’t showing up just yet
• Reading the Andrew Weatherall tribute book: Fail we may, sail we must. Thanks to Stephen J for sending me a copy across the sea

Last Rites: What did you think of this edition?

Damn fine | Solid | Meh | Fail