Building a shed is a finite process with known steps that produces a tangible result. If you spend time on it, you will make forward progress and be able to see it.
If you are a knowledge worker, this is frequently lacking. You might spend months or years working on something without knowing of you'll succeed. You might get stuck (eg, debugging) and not be able to see any progress for long periods of time. You might be blocked from making forward progress because you are waiting on other people. And at the end of the day, what you accomplish might not be very visible or might end up being finished but useless.
So it's nice to do something where you feel like you actually did something.
“Of course I don’t have to do this,” one middle aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. “But look, this table’s clean.” He agreed that the table was clean.
“Usually,” the man said, “I work on alien religions… I catalogue, evaluate, compare. I come up with theories and argue with colleagues here and elsewhere. But the job’s never finished. Always new examples and even the old ones get reevaluated and new people come along and come up with new ideas about what you thought was settled. But,” he slapped the table, “when you clean a table, you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement.”
If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day.
It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task
and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned
into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little
things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the
big things right.
And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made
— that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.
If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.
- Admiral William H. McRaven
It usually even fills me with the opposite feeling. I don't like sleeping in "made beds". They're very constricting. A made bed may look tidy, but I don't look at my bed other than when I go to sleep.
Not wrong. Try this alternative: Relocate your bed within the room, even if only by a few inches. If better, keep the modest improvement to your local environment. If worse, move the bed back and keep the knowledge.
Honestly I feel like there are people out there that are massively affected by the environment around them. They can't work without a tidy desk, eat without the cupboards closed etc. A tidy desk or closed doors don't effect my mental well being, neither a bed in disarray, or bed not centered in the room? I go about my day blissfully unaware of any of it.
I'm inclined to agree, but when I moved in with my girlfriend that changed. My girlfriend is one of those people who finds fulfillment in busywork. She likes a made bed.
So now I find meaning in making the bed, because she likes it made.
“Without courage, men will be ruled by tyrants and despots. Without courage, no great society can flourish. Without courage, the bullies of the world rise up. With it, you can accomplish any goal. With it, you can defy and defeat evil.”
There are many gems in that speech, but I took the excerpt that was more relevant as a reply. I am not militaristic but I do believe that discipline makes your life better.
This is as good a place as any to ask: what does it mean to "make your bed"? I've been hearing this expression for years, and always have a vague impression of arranging your blankets, pillows, etc., neat and tidy - but that's just my assumption based on context.
Growing up in India in the 90s, we generally made our beds (in a more literal sense) in the night: unrolling a dried grass mat [1] on the floor, a few blankets on top of that (a woollen one in the middle if it's winter), and a pillow or two. In the morning, the blankets were folded, mat rolled up, pillows and everything stashed away in a shelf until it's night again. The first time I came across this expression, I thought this is what they meant - to make this contraption in the morning itself!
In your context making your bed would be the reverse. It would be storing away the contraption. The saying refers to people’s habit of leaving their beds a mess of twisted blankets and a bumble of pillows.
This is why I cook. At the end of a day where I make no discernable progress, spending time on a tangible product that is done in a finite amount of time helps unwind a great deal.
Well said. Also, you get to decide everything. There are no meetings or planning sessions. You can change your mind halfway through and no one else cares. Control can be quite satisfying.
I spent a few days moving several tons of soil from bags to planters, and it was fantastic. Very rewarding for being everything my job usually isn't. Clearly defined, known progress, you just get stuck in and go.
This absolutely meshes with my own experience. After years of software development, I find there's a very different sort of reward associated with building out my own fibre network. Once a cable is up on the poles and spliced in, it's a physical real world object that works and makes the customer happy. It's not like software that's never finished with so much internal state that is invisible and constantly needs improvement.
It's important to maintain a sense of self awareness about it though, i.e., recognizing you want/need to focus more well-defined task where the outcome yields a sense of achievement because you need a break from some larger/fuzzier goal.
If you are a knowledge worker, this is frequently lacking. You might spend months or years working on something without knowing of you'll succeed. You might get stuck (eg, debugging) and not be able to see any progress for long periods of time. You might be blocked from making forward progress because you are waiting on other people. And at the end of the day, what you accomplish might not be very visible or might end up being finished but useless.
So it's nice to do something where you feel like you actually did something.