Why little things matter?

Recently I happened to read the book “Make your bed” by Admiral William H McRaven (US Navy Retired). There are many life lessons that can be imbibed from it. I was quite impressed with the book that I gifted a book each to my sons. I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to groom, mentor their juniors as they step into their youth. 

Admiral McRaven a Four-Star Admiral and an accomplished Navy SEAL for thirty-seven years, was Commander of all US Special Operations Forces as his final assignment. His book is filled with ten valuable lessons that has been peppered with real life stories that he encountered as a Navy SEAL. But the one that set me thinking was his first lesson “If you want to change the world… start off by making your bed.

The Author describes how critical it is for a Navy SEAL to make his bed every day, a task that appears so trivial to each of us. How as a new recruit he was expected to make his bed to the standards required of a Navy SEAL trainee. A failure to meet the standards inevitably resulted in punishments. He also goes on to explain why a mundane task in the daily life of a Navy recruit was given such an importance. 

Getting over an inspection of the room and of course the bed did not get any rewards from the instructor to the author, but gave him immense satisfaction that the first task of the day however little, was accomplished to satisfaction of his instructor. He carried this habit through his career and concludes his first lesson by saying “If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.” Isn’t it so true? 

The book appealed to me a lot and I could relate to many of the lessons owing to me being a Naval veteran. I recall that I spent hours in the Naval Academy as a cadet polishing my drill boots. As an officer cadet we could have afforded the shoes to be polished by someone else even professionally but each one of the cadets were required to polish our shoes, brass buttons of our tunic before every parade. It never occurred to me at that time that these little things are life lessons to a Naval cadet. But when I look back, these were indeed very valuable lessons that each of the cadets learnt that, if you get your little things right, you will be able to get the big things right.

This set me thinking, why little things matter. Most of the times in our hurry to get work done, we tend to overlook little things. This is an age of Multi-tasking and I have seen it comes with its own pitfalls. I believe from my experience that as a human beings, we are wired to be mono-taskers. We miss out on the details, to do little things, when rushing to complete our tasks. We tend to lose our focus on the job at hand and ignore the little things with the single pursuit on completing our goal. We fail to understand that little things make big things and if we get the little things right, we will get the big things right. Even if the job is as little as “Making your bed”. Little things do matter.