Imagine this:

After watching an inspirational speech on YouTube, you learn that the speaker also has a book with the same title, so you buy it right away.

You meant to read and apply the lessons to your life, but life gets in the way and the next thing you know, it’s been years since you bought it.

Did you read it? Nope! Maybe you started but then realized you don’t have enough time or patience to finish the book. Now it’s just collecting dust on your bookshelf.

Now, stop imagining:

This is a real story from a real person I know. The speech and the book are real too.

Do you know which book I’m talking about?

Fine, I’ll tell you!

It’s called Make Your Bed by Admiral McRaven, a retired Navy SEAL and is based on a commencement speech he gave to the class of 2014 at the University of Texas at Austin.

I enjoyed the speech, but the book, not so much!

But I read it all the way and am now sharing my insights here because I wanted to test and validate my latest idea: a ‘reading service’ for people who want to gain wisdom from books but lack the time or the patience to do the reading themselves.

Unlike various YouTube channels and book review sites that simply summarize the top X takeaways from popular books, I intend to take it a step further by interviewing my clients beforehand and making my notes personalized to their goals and lifestyles.

Intrigued? Find out how I came up with this idea (more like how this idea came to me) here.

Back to Making Your Bed

It’s a fairly short book with interesting stories about Navy SEALs, so it didn’t feel like a complete waste of my time.

Each of the ten chapters starts with a one-liner in the form of “if you want to change the world, [general life lesson in the form of a SEAL metaphor].” Then there are the stories that expand on the opening line and eventually segue into a closing paragraph (or two), where the author loosely connects the SEAL metaphors to life in general.

For example, chapter ten is about never, ever ringing the bell. In the Navy SEAL training, there is a bell, which if you ring three times, means that you quit. The concluding paragraph states that life is hard and there will be many times when you feel like quitting, but it’s important to not give up because it’ll be worth it at the end.

I agree with this chapter’s, and other chapters’ conclusions, but this book lacks practical and useful tips that everyday civilians can use to actually change the world. I’m pretty sure only chapter one, which talks about making your bed first thing every day, contains advice that you can implement right away. But even then, you could be trapping moisture and mites!

Don’t waste your time and money on this book, do this instead:

• Watch the related commencement speech on YouTube
• If any of the 10 life lessons interest you, research and read more useful books on those topics (feel free to also ask me for recommendations)
• Remember that not every bestseller is good – I can think of at least 9 bestsellers that weren’t fun or useful to read

One more thing

Reading books should be fun, not a chore that has to be checked off, hence why I don’t track hours spent or books read.

If you’re like my friend who bought Make Your Bed (or any other book) a while back but have yet to make use of it (even though you love books), I want you to stop beating yourself over this.

Research has shown that people often remember their unfinished tasks more than the ones they finished; this is called the Zeigarnik Effect.

So, if that unfinished book is still relevant, you could either read it yourself, let me read it, or simply discard it and move on with your life!