Make Your Bed Each Morning To Kickstart Better Habits

Make Your Bed Each Morning To Kickstart Better Habits

Making your bed is one of those habits that feels pointless. You’ll mess it up every night, and no one will ever see it made, right? Well, except you. And the satisfaction it gives you may be what’s really worth it.

Picture: Chad Skeers/Flickr

As Naval Admiral William H. McRaven explains, making your bed each morning isn’t really about the benefits provided by having perfectly organised sheets. It’s about starting your day with a productive routine, and giving yourself something to be satisfied with. Rather than trudging out of bed leaving a trail of mess in your wake, you’ll start the day with something accomplished:

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

In this case, the habit itself isn’t really the important part. If you slip or miss a day, you probably won’t have a drill sergeant coming in to yell at you. You might not ever notice or care that your bed wasn’t made. But how the habits carry over into the rest of your day is the real goal. Because if you can wake up in the morning and accomplish a task before you’ve left your bedroom, you can do anything that day.

Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World [University of Texas via 99u]


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