Welcome! Today we’ll be reviewing Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life … And Maybe The World by Admiral William H. McRaven.
Review Summary
- Length: 10 chapters, 130 pages
- Cover Type: Hard
- Personal Completion Time: One Week
- TL;DR Summary: Reminiscent of “12 Rules for Life” by Dr. Jordan Peterson, a very succinct book distilling the vast life experience and lessons the Admiral learned into a pocket-sized book.
- Book Link: Amazon
- Final Rating: 4.5 / 5 Stars
Brief, powerful, and to the point, this book could aptly be described as the “lite version” of Admiral William H. McRavens “Sea Stories” which covers the many gripping, heart pounding, and emotionally moving experiences that the Admiral personally recounts over the course of his military career. A former Navy SEAL and Admiral, William McRaven is no stranger to difficulty – over the course of this very brief book the Admiral skillfully boils down his many challenging life experiences into 10 easily memorable bullet points. I won’t go over all the lessons here, but some of them include:
- Start Your Day with a Task Completed
- You Can’t Go It Alone
- Only the Size of Your Heart Matters
- Life’s Not Fair – Drive On!
- Failure Can Make You Stronger
And many more. If any of these lessons sound vaguely familiar to the bravado of Jocko Willink you wouldn’t be wrong; in fact, the Admiral himself personally appeared on two separate Jocko Podcast episodes (#290 and #383) which I highly recommend if you enjoy any of Jocko’s content. However, for the sake of brevity I’ll try to keep this review as brief as this book – if you enjoy Jocko Willink’s or Dr. Jordan Peterson’s books, or if you have any interest in the lessons listed above, I think you’ll find this book as great of a read as I did.