Clutter

In your brain and your brewery

Clutter! Most of us live with it, in our homes and also in our breweries. Oh no, Hennessy is going to tell us to clean up our act. Well, actually I am going to suggest it.

Modern life is full of stuff. Big things, small things, free things (Schwag), things that are sentimental, things that just rock your boat. A friend recently lent me his Fender Stratocaster. He never played it, had it for a long time but wouldn't sell it either. I noticed right away it was old, so I dated it and found I was holding the holy grail of electric guitars: a 1964 Pre-CBS beauty, all original. After playing it for a few days I gave it back to him and told him it was worth about $35,000 (which it was) and then proceeded to dream about owning a vintage guitar. I already own a Rickenbacker I’ve had for 45 years signed by Chuck Berry. I didn’t need another guitar, but isn’t that what we are talking about? Always wanting more stuff! We are drowning in it.

There is a lot of science about how much is enough. I don’t want to get too side-tracked here, but once your basic needs are met, and you have a few luxuries, you actually don’t get as much satisfaction from having more. In fact, the more you have, your satisfaction actually starts to decline, and that can effect you in mental and physical ways. Stay with me, this has to do with your brewery as well.

Clutter will sneak up on you. Clutter actually attracts clutter. There are places in your brewery where after you clean it, that same place gathers clutter again almost immediately. You could think of these places as “hot spots”.

In your brewhouse, if you don’t put something back when you are done with it, and instead leave it on your brewers table, more things will show up. The empty pint glass. Perhaps some mail you opened and had started to read. By the next day the table is full. This is especially true of shelves that you keep your books and log sheets, and other small things you need in your brewing day: Hemocytometers, temperature probes, calculators, etc.

Mis en plas is what they teach you in culinary school. It literally means everything in its place in French. I can tell in a professional kitchen who is classically trained by the mis en plas evident on the cooks table. This is equally as apparent in the brewery.

Having to look for things can drain your energy. This is because clutter increases distractions in your day. You may not think you are noticing it, but it is in fact, competing for your attention and impairing your focus.

OK, what is clutter? Basically it is what gets used and what doesn’t. If you haven ‘t touched something for a month, it should be thrown out, or boxed up or filed away in a place where you can still get to it if you need it, but not in your way everyday.

Think about your brewers boneyard. How many broken tri-clamp pieces do you need? And the stuff you do use everyday? Why leave it in a pile like the picture above. Hang the TC clamps on a hook. Put the extra Sankey valves in their own space. Organize your tees and elbows, and keep your gaskets all together as well. And as for the brewers table, clean it at the end of every day. Only leave what is essential. For me it is a pencil and a piece of paper with what I need to do the next day.

This sounds preachy, but it’s not. A Princeton study looked at performance “when an individual was surrounded by organized versus disorganized environments. Overall, subjects were more productive, less irritable and distracted in the clutter-free environment versus the disorganized environment where their stress increased.”

Researchers concluded that physical clutter in our environment can overload the visual cortex, by competing for attention in our brain and interfering with our ability to focus and process information.

Another study out of UCLA, looked at families and the stuff they collected. It followed the home owners around as they inventoried all their possessions and took periodic saliva samples while looking at everything. They found elevated cortisol levels pretty consistent in relation to the amount of clutter they had. This is your flight or fight response, a feeling of constant stress. This is not good for your body, because you never get a chance to come off this feeling of danger.

Working in an environment of clutter also may create the same stress responses (as if you didn’t have enough on your plate already). However, working in an environment that is clutter free is what you should be striving for in your operation. Successful large breweries are show-pieces of organization. Google some pictures of medium to large Belgian breweries and I would bet you won’t see clutter.

Just try this experiment. For the next week, organize your brewery to get rid of clutter, so that everything looks tidy and in its place. Then over the week keep it that way. Just make it a habit of putting everything back to your clean set point at the end of the day, even to the point of leaving your boots set neatly next to your mash tun, waiting for the next day. At the end of the week, see if it felt any different. Is it worth it to you to continue for another week, possibly creating a clutter-free habit? I would love it if you would share before and after pictures with me to tom@coloradoboy.com. I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t feel it would be a good contribution to your brewery. It won’t kill you.

Draft typed on a 1965 Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter!