In this episode, Jon continues his habit-tracking series and explains how making his bed in the morning helps him lead happier and more productive days.
Jon returns with a new episode of Five-Minute Friday with a look at another simple morning habit: making your bed. Not only does he use this habit to set the tone for the day, but he also uses it to automatically cue himself to perform other helpful behaviors, thereby removing the effort involved in maintaining his morning routine.
This habit may also prevent you from performing others that negatively impact your productivity throughout the day. If your bed is made, your sleeping space is psychologically closed off, and you won’t be easily lured back into it to take a nap or lie around while scrolling your Instagram feed. As a bonus, it doesn’t hurt to have a tidy bedroom. For many, including Jon, it helps him feel more relaxed and happy.
And just like starting the day with a glass of water, this is a quick habit that can be chained together with others to jumpstart your day and propel you to perform other morning habits, like getting into your gym clothes.
If you’re joining this series now and are interested in tracking your habits, visit Jon’s habit tracking worksheet. Good luck!
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Podcast Transcript
(00:05):
This is Five-Minute Friday on Making Your Bed.
(00:19):
Back in Episode #538, I kicked off the new year of Five-Minute Fridays by introducing the practice of habit-tracking, including providing you with a template habit-tracking spreadsheet. I followed that up in Episode #540, a week later, by detailing for you my habit of starting the day with a glass of water.
Back in Episode #538, I kicked off the new year of Five-Minute Fridays by introducing the practice of habit-tracking, including providing you with a template habit-tracking spreadsheet. I followed that up in Episode #540, a week later, by detailing for you my habit of starting the day with a glass of water.
(00:39):
So Daily Habit #1 was the meta-habit of tracking your habits. Daily Habit #2 is the morning water glass. That brings us today to my Daily Habit #3, which is another morning habit: making your bed.
So Daily Habit #1 was the meta-habit of tracking your habits. Daily Habit #2 is the morning water glass. That brings us today to my Daily Habit #3, which is another morning habit: making your bed.
(00:53):
Lots of people use “make your bed” figuratively to mean “set something in motion” but I literally mean make your bed here! This habit is about setting the tone for the day. If you set up your environment to automatically cue you to perform helpful behaviors then you take the energy and effort out of building habits and maintaining good behaviors. If your bed is made, then your sleeping space is psychologically closed off and you aren’t queued as easily by the bed to take a nap or lie around scrolling mindlessly through your Instagram feed in it. You’re thus more likely to engage in the higher-effort activities you’d like to, be it getting your gym clothes on or sitting down at your desk to work.
Lots of people use “make your bed” figuratively to mean “set something in motion” but I literally mean make your bed here! This habit is about setting the tone for the day. If you set up your environment to automatically cue you to perform helpful behaviors then you take the energy and effort out of building habits and maintaining good behaviors. If your bed is made, then your sleeping space is psychologically closed off and you aren’t queued as easily by the bed to take a nap or lie around scrolling mindlessly through your Instagram feed in it. You’re thus more likely to engage in the higher-effort activities you’d like to, be it getting your gym clothes on or sitting down at your desk to work.
(01:33):
As a bonus, I think it’s also nice to have a tidy-looking bedroom! Personally, I think it makes me happier and more relaxed.
As a bonus, I think it’s also nice to have a tidy-looking bedroom! Personally, I think it makes me happier and more relaxed.
(01:42):
Another cool thing about this habit is that like starting the day with a glass of water, making your bed is a quick habit that only takes a few moments and so you can easily chain it together into a sequence of easily-reinforceable good habits. As an explicit example, you could start each day by making your bed immediately after drinking your bedside water glass. After a while, making your bed will be automatic and seem effortless.
Another cool thing about this habit is that like starting the day with a glass of water, making your bed is a quick habit that only takes a few moments and so you can easily chain it together into a sequence of easily-reinforceable good habits. As an explicit example, you could start each day by making your bed immediately after drinking your bedside water glass. After a while, making your bed will be automatic and seem effortless.
(02:05):
Like the habits I’ve already covered in this series so far, making your bed in the morning is a binary habit — either you do it or you don’t — so if you were interested in adopting it and you’re using my habit-tracking template from Episode #538, then you’d set the min column for this row of the spreadsheet to 0 and the max column to 1.
Like the habits I’ve already covered in this series so far, making your bed in the morning is a binary habit — either you do it or you don’t — so if you were interested in adopting it and you’re using my habit-tracking template from Episode #538, then you’d set the min column for this row of the spreadsheet to 0 and the max column to 1.
(02:23):
All right, that is it for today. In a Five-Minute Friday in the not-too-distant future, I’ll be back with another daily habit. In the meantime, keep on rockin’ it out there and catch you on another round of SuperDataScience very soon.
All right, that is it for today. In a Five-Minute Friday in the not-too-distant future, I’ll be back with another daily habit. In the meantime, keep on rockin’ it out there and catch you on another round of SuperDataScience very soon.
