Beginning to Learn

From tech into the kitchen, reflections after two months

Fredy’s hands dropped tablespoons of salt in quick succession into a bubbling curry of smoked eggplant, sweet potato, tomato puree and spices. I stood a couple of steps away, carefully leaning over the cauldron to ensure no boiling splashes hit my arms and face.

“Remember, move your hands. Don’t be scared. And don’t think too much”

I started in the kitchen almost two months ago, after leaving my job in tech. I have no formal training; instead I’m diving in head first to learn as much as I can, quickly. As a former teacher and ed-techie, I’m fascinated by the process of learning, and I’d like to share a few of the insights I’ve gleaned during this early part of my new journey.

Note: I’m going to focus on the big-picture, but if you’re curious about the day-to-day at our restaurant, check this out.

The Learning Process

Think back to the last time you had to learn a completely new system with very little prior knowledge. Maybe you tried to pick up a new language or began a new hobby. The early stages are really exciting, but quickly can get frustrating during the leap from total newbie to not-very-good-beginner.

I’m 2 months in, and I’m firmly in the not-very-good-beginner bucket. If this were going to be a hobby, I could sit back and admire my basic level of skill and move on to the next thing… But since I’m going all-in, I have to find a way to go from not-very-good to good. To get there, my daily goal is to create an environment for learning efficiently — to create as much opportunity as possible for new ideas and techniques to stick in my mind.

I’ve found a few practices to be especially helpful to learning effectively:

Establish a relentless focus on the work at hand. It’s very easy when doing repetitive tasks to let the mind wander, which both slows down output and reduces its quality. In the classroom and at Coursera, the nature of these tasks were different than in the kitchen — think grading or clearing my inbox vs chopping 300 lbs of chicken — but the practice can transfer. When I’m at my best, my mind is in a state of wakeful meditation, allowing thoughts to emerge and quickly dissipate while treating each stroke of the knife as the first. It’s really tough to maintain this; training the mind requires just as much effort as any other form of exercise.

Keep a level head. It’s important to find ways to draw energy productively from both positive and negative experiences. My time in the classroom gave me a lot of practice dealing with emotional and physical highs and lows — delivering an engaging lesson was exhilarating, while seeing students struggle with coursework or their challenges at home left me wiped out. In comparison, the dinner-time rush isn’t quite as serious, but it’s still an assault on the body and mind’s stress systems! When letting emotions go for a ride on the roller-coaster in the classroom, I often found myself using energy just to manage them, trying to decelerate when I was too excited, trying to lift my spirits when down. Ultimately, staying within a tighter emotional band left more energy to spend on keeping the mind focused — which I know is key to being good at the restaurant.

Remember that each day brings an opportunity to improve. Mistakes made yesterday or earlier in the day happened exactly then. The next time can be better. Especially at this stage, I cannot be good or bad — just new and improving.

Be prepared. It turns out your parents and teachers were right. Study skills are important — review recipes, memorize processes, visualize tasks ahead of time and prioritize. Proper preparation prevents poor performance, or something like that!

Grilling and cutting a pile of ribs before marinating for our Thursday Vindaloo Ribs special

Mind Games

Almost every single day, I do something to sabotage my best efforts at creating a positive learning environment for myself. I’ve tried to isolate a few of the issues that lead to funks:

Instead of thinking about improving, I think about not wanting to screw up. In tough moments I sometimes operate out of fear rather than confidence, which will inevitably cause problems in a kitchen environment where it’s important to do things swiftly without hesitation. Just like a great NBA shooter will not hesitate when attempting a transition shot, a great cook needs to find a similar flow. Fear will disrupt that flow. To draw another analogy, it’s no surprise that Facebook implemented a “move fast and break things” motto early on. Could’ve taken the words out of Fredy’s mouth.

I linger on mistakes. Nearly every day as a first year teacher, at the end of the school day I’d go to my fellow first- year buddy’s classroom and we’d vent about how bad we were at teaching. We’d focus on all of the things we wished we could do better without recognizing the strides we were making every day. In the kitchen, like the classroom, I tend to find it easier to remember the negative and push away the positive. Doing so is hugely detrimental; it’s the catalyst for fear, which we know is no good.

I get frustrated by not feeling like I’m good at what I do. Every day I face the reality of being less skilled than the people around me. It’s kind of absurd to believe it would be any other way at this point, given my complete lack of experience. That, however is no solace. The positive side — it drives me to want to get better really quickly. But really, there is no shortcut to becoming a great cook; I just need to put in quality time. In my moments of self-doubt, I think about the career I left. I loved Coursera and felt like I was doing good work there with insanely talented people. What was I thinking leaving? Will I ever be great at this? In rational moments, I know that I have good reasons for doing what I’m doing and that the doubts are only natural. In time, I know that getting better will create a positive feedback loop: it’ll build my confidence, which will make me feel better about my ability level, which will allow me to move on from these doubts and get to the next level.

Getting a chicken broth ready on Thursday morning so it can simmer until Friday

The Next Stage

It turns out Fredy’s advice summed up most of what I needed to be successful:

Move your hands → Be quick and skillful in your actions.

Don’t be scared → Eliminate fear; of making mistakes, of getting burned, of failure.

Don’t think too much → Focus; be mindful.

I’m a beginner right now, but even in the last couple of weeks I’ve begun to feel a transition to the next stage — a tentative comfort. At some point, I’ll be making incremental improvements on technique rather than learning how to just make something work; I’ll be looking for ways to go from decent to pretty-good to awesome. I’ll be seeking outlets for creativity, avenues to mastery. The learning process never ends, and it’s going to be a blast to continue the journey.

Thanks to Harish, Esha, and Tal for reading drafts and giving feedback! Also, many, many (ongoing) thanks to my colleagues at Pondi who are putting up with my new-ness and helping me learn.