🥊 Navy Seal vs Billionaire

Unpopular opinion: “If you wanna change the world, start off by making your bed”

After 37 years serving as a Navy Seal, that’s what Admiral William H. McRaven had to say about leading a successful life.

In fact, he wrote an entire NYT Bestselling book about it and gave a commencement speech at the University of Texas on the same topic.

But could making your bed really be that big of a deal?

He makes a few great points that I totally agreed with when I read his book a few years ago.

1. When you start your day by making your bed, it’s the first domino falling in a chain reaction that’ll motivate you to do many other great things throughout the day.

2. The discipline of paying attention to the small details in making your bed will bleed over and improve your performance and accuracy in other areas of your life.

3. If you’ve had a difficult day or struggled to accomplish other things you wanted to, you can end your day by coming back to a nicely made bed - a reminder that you did at least one good thing today.

Kinda makes you wanna make your bed, right?

Well before you do - what if I told you that billionaire Mark Cuban has actually vowed to never make his bed again for the rest of his life?

I almost couldn't believe it at first. Then I felt totally validated since I'm terrible at making my own bed!

On an episode of Shark Tank (where celebrity investors make deals with budding entrepreneurs), he turned down a deal on a product that made making your bed easier.

His reason?

Years ago he ran the numbers.

He figured he spent about an hour total per week making his bed.

Over a year, it’d be 52 hours.

Over 3 or 4 decades, it quickly added up to months of his life spent making his bed, only for it to be messy again later the same day.

So as a business decision, he quit cold-turkey:

“I vowed that I’d keep my sheets and bedding clean, but I would NEVER make my bed”

But wait - this is Mark Cuban we’re talking about!

• with an estimated net worth of around 5 billion

• a history of philanthropy

• a reputation for helping countless new entrepreneurs become wild successes

• and most recently in the headlines for completely disrupting the prescription drug industry by selling them at record low prices

Many would consider Mark Cuban to have already “changed the world”…

…despite never making his bed.

So do you need to make your bed to change the world, or not?

Depends. Lemme explain.

Admiral McRaven argues that making your bed will produce psychological benefits of motivation, accomplishment, and discipline that’ll boost you into success in other areas of life.

Mark Cuban seems to be oozing internal motivation, so he doesn’t need the boost from making his bed. He’s already disciplined enough to make sacrifices necessary to build billion dollar companies. And he’s got plenty of accomplishments that making his bed won’t make that big of a difference for him. He just needs more time to do what he does best.

So are you like the Navy Seal who’s looking for that spark in the morning to fuel his fire throughout the rest of the day?

Or are you like Mark, full of all the motivation you need but looking for more time to get important things done?

At the end of the day, the only wrong answer is the one that doesn’t get you the results you’re looking for.

(Did I write this entire article just to explain to my wife why I didn’t make the bed this morning? Never 😂)

Thanks for reading!

- Kody

P.S. This song has been stuck in my head for days. Hope you like it too!