I was in Sri-Lanka couple months ago visiting family. There are mosquitoes. So we sleep under mosquito-nets. You have no choice but to make your bed twice a day. Once before sleeping and once after waking up.
After almost 10 years of never needing to make my bed (no mosquitoes in Dubai) here I was… Twirling and twisting and loopy-tying my mosquito net like I had done as a boy, every day since I can remember, until I left Sri-Lanka for college… Then carefully placing the pillows like so, and covering them with the bed cover.
When I came back to Dubai, I started making my bed again. I hear James Altucher in my head off and on, saying, “How you do anything is how you do everything.”
Other people make a big deal of making your bed too. Military types, usually. So I figure, why not keep going? Making your bed carries over to your business. You start to look for bed-making opportunities. These are big or little tasks you can do first thing in the morning. They make your business run well. Or make you more money.
What bed do you need to make in your business? I can’t answer that for you. You know your business better than I do. BTW this metaphorical bed is something only you can make. It isn’t something you can outsource to someone else, or even want to. In my business for example it’s writing my daily email. There are a bunch of benefits to this activity. The most obvious of which is the money it makes me in new business.
When I first decided to email daily, it was the first task I did every day. I wrote the email in the morning and scheduled the broadcast for later in the day. So they went out like clockwork.
The past few days, I’ve been writing it at the end of the day and broadcasting the email as soon as I was done. You may have noticed the emails coming into you inbox later and later, and not at the same time of the day. And they are MUCH harder to write when your tank is on empty. Yesterday and the day before, I almost skipped writing them. The only things that kept me going were my stubbornness and pride.
So now I’m back to writing the email first thing in the morning. As I am typing this sentence, it is 8:36 am. The difference in quality, the ease with which I am able to express my thoughts, is night and day. So much so that I don’t know why I even bothered doing it any other way.
Enduring the discomfort of writing tired taught me to make my business bed. In turn, I am able to teach you not to make my mistakes. And if you think a little you’ll figure out which bed you need to make and then make it. First thing in the morning.
So which metaphorical bed are you going to make first thing in the morning? Let me know in the comments.