Rule #4: Make your bed (or at least do something meaningful)

With a salute to Admiral William H. McRaven, USN

I joined the military as a 17 year old and one of the initial things we were taught was how to make our beds. We had to get pretty good at it pretty damn quickly! Making your bed was the first task of each day (well actually it was the second, the first task being to muster in the breezeway with the bottom sheet from your bed over your shoulder; this was intended to stop us new cadets from leaving our bed made and sleeping on the floor).

I had never really thought about what the act of making that bed was doing until I watched Admiral McRaven’s address for the first time, about 30 years after making my military bed for the first time.

This is my first experiment using DALL-E (a partner to ChatGPT) to generate an image using artificial intelligence.

In 2014, US Navy Admiral William H. McRaven gave a commencement speech to the University of Texas graduates in which he stated ‘If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed’. You can watch his speech here - it’s 19 minutes long but well worth a short investment of your time. He also published a book that year titled ‘Make Your Bed - Small things that can change your life…and maybe the world’.

The act of doing something as simple as making your bed as the first act of the day can have highly beneficial outcomes. I have seen someone in the depths of depression who has perked up, just a little, from the pleasure they received from the sense of achievement of getting a job done. And I have watched someone overcome by anxiety calm their brain and steady their heart rate by concentrating on getting the hospital corner right.

The first act of the day doesn’t need to be making your bed, but it should be something meaningful. While some may disagree, I would argue that picking up your phone and scrolling through funny cat videos as the first act of the day is not meaningful. You might get a dopamine hit as you chuckle at the cat falling into the fish tank, but it is like a sugar high - it fades away very quickly.

On the other hand, going for a walk with your partner for the morning coffee while watching the sun come up, doing a gym or yoga class, making lunch for your kids - these are all meaningful activities. They will give you a true sense of achievement. And after you get that sense of achievement a few times, your brain will become addicted to the dopamine being produced. You will start to get into a habit; a good habit; a much better habit than scrolling TikTok videos.

So what are you going to do to start your day tomorrow morning?