Make Your Bed

In 2014, Admiral William McRaven stepped onto the graduation stage at the University of Texas at Austin and spoke for a few minutes about what he had learned over his long career in the U.S. Navy. The video spread across the internet and was watched by millions of people. In 2017, he turned that speech into a book, Make Your Bed, expanding the stories and adding memories from other chapters of his life.

The book is short and organized into ten lessons, each tied to a part of basic training for the SEALs, the special operations force of the United States Navy. That training, called BUD/S, is famous for being physically and psychologically demanding at the same time, and for washing out the majority of candidates.

The goal is to translate lessons from an extreme environment into principles for everyday life. McRaven does not ask anyone to become a soldier, only to look at what he learned there as a toolbox for facing hard days, work, school, and relationships.

The first lesson gives the book its name. Every day, before anything else, trainees had to make their beds to perfection for the instructors' inspection. It sounds like a silly requirement for someone about to face a beach run and a dive into freezing surf, yet the author sees a deep logic in it.

When you start the day by completing a task, even a small one, you get your first small sense of accomplishment. That push leads to a second task, then a third, and by the end of the day that sum of small things has turned into something big. And if the day goes wrong, you still come home to a made bed, a reminder that something was done right.

In the language of someone who wakes up at five in the morning to catch a bus: it does not have to be a bed. It can be washing your coffee mug or laying out tomorrow's clothes. What matters is the first small win and the idea that details make a difference.

The second lesson comes from the inflatable boats. During training, small crews of students had to carry the boat, paddle out to sea, and face the surf together. Anyone who tried to go at their own pace threw the team off, and anyone who did not have the crew's backing did not make it past the first week.

McRaven concludes that nobody gets through life without support. At some point you are going to need someone paddling beside you, whether it is a coworker, a teacher, a neighbor, or a friend. And the reverse is also true: people who isolate themselves out of pride usually do not get as far.

This connects with something very familiar in everyday life: passing the hat, a neighborhood work crew, a neighbor lending a hand on a weekend home project. It is no coincidence that many people who make it through hard times remember who reached out at the right moment. The author's message is to look for those people and, whenever you can, be that person for someone else.

There is also a hidden lesson for anyone who leads. A team only works when every person knows their part counts, including the people doing the least visible work. From the bricklayer to the manager, the job moves forward when everyone paddles in the same direction, and trouble usually starts when someone thinks their work matters more than everyone else's.