Always Make Your Bed
Son,
Always make your bed first thing in the morning. I know it sounds strange, but there’s a reason every institution and military branch makes you do it, and it’s not “because they can.” It’s because making your bed in the morning accomplishes several important things. This one small habit helps you:
- Build discipline by practicing consistency.
- Get a quick win by accomplishing something small but meaningful within the first few minutes of waking up.
- Create order in one area of your life, which helps you create order in all areas of your life.
- Make your bedroom and bed look tidy and inviting to women, making them less likely to think you’re depressed or deranged, neither of which is an attractive quality in a man.
“Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.”
Discipline is the single most useful quality a man can acquire. It is also the hardest. Discipline is the ability to do something regardless of motivation or inspiration. If you have it, things that are impossible for the undisciplined become trivial to you. But discipline is not an inborn quality. It has to be trained. And the easiest way to train it is to do things consistently.
“Removing a mountain starts with carrying small stones.”
Making your bed is like picking up the first pebble. It doesn’t make a huge difference on its own, but it gets the ball rolling. Even if the rest of your day is a complete waste, at least you accomplished something—and accomplishing something makes it less likely that the rest of the day will be a waste.
“Order promotes order.”
Once you’ve done one sensible thing, it’s easier to keep going. Don’t say to yourself, “Today, I’m going to deep clean my bedroom.”1 Make the bed. Once the bed looks orderly, you’ll want to put everything else into order.
“The depressed and the deranged aren’t sexy.”
Forget what you might’ve gleaned from gothic novels; mental illness isn’t sexy. Therefore, behaviours associated with the depressed and the deranged aren’t sexy. Nothing screams depressed and deranged like a bedroom full of garbage and a soiled, unmade bed. Trust me, kid, no one’s going to want to get into your bed for some rumpy-pumpy if your bed is a mess. And that would be a shame, because I want grandkids.
- No, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to deep clean your bedroom every week.