I make the bed every morning as one of my household “duties.” Now, perhaps this task is expected of me, but I also know that it makes me feel better before heading off to work. And it definitely makes me feel better to come home to a neat and clean bed at the end of a long day, instead of a rumpled one. Pretty obvious, right? On the surface, it makes perfect sense why I (and many millions of others) perform this “chore” daily.
But I didn’t realize that the simple act of making the bed just might be the world’s easiest success habit. Not because it automatically brings upon fortune and fame, but primarily because it starts a chain reaction of other productive habits.
As Charles Duhigg notes in his fascinating book, The Power of Habit, “making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget.” Making your bed is what he calls a “keystone habit,” something that kick starts a pattern of other good behavior. And since it happens at the very beginning of the day, you’re apt to make better decisions for the remainder of the day thanks to your bed-making routine (exercise is another good example of this concept).
Navy Seal William H. McCraven, commander of the forces that led the raid to kill Osama bin Laden, echoed the same sentiment in his 2014…
