Part A

I’m a list fanatic. Write it down on a list, I believe, and there is far less chance that you will ever find yourself beginning a sentence with the pathetic excuse, “Sorry… I forgot to…”

The very process of writing a list clarifies and focuses the mind. Write enough of them and you will begin to think in lists, automatically prioritizing. While this can leach into your personal relationships and be hell on your friends and loved ones, it makes for crisper and more efficient cooking.

Before you go to the market to shop for supplies, it is a very good idea to have a shopping list. While your shopping list should be a fairly free-flowing document, your prep list, once written, should be a rigid, inflexible manifesto, tyrannical and unwavering in its requirements. On both lists, every task, every item, should be written in neat, legible fashion, to be ticked off as it is accomplished. This is an exercise in behavior modification as much as anything else.