The 5AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life.

by Robin Sharma

He pulled out the flashlight and focused its rays on the ceiling of the chamber. The following brain tattoos slowly appeared: #1. To make a habit last, never install it alone. #2. The teacher learns the most. #3. When you most feel like quitting is the time you must continue advancing.

3 brain tatooes

It took the billionaire over a year of visiting that cramped bookshop with books arranged on old wooden shelves that lined the timeworn walls for this young woman to agree to have dinner with him. The billionaire’s quest was driven by her under-the-radar kind of beauty, her ardent intelligence, her bohemian personal style and her awkward laugh that made him feel as happy as a family of bees in a huge honey pot.

A took a year for the billionaire to get his first date with the girl.

As the sun slowly ascended, for the first time a tattoo could be seen on the back of the billionaire’s left hand. It had numbers on it. They simply read “20/20/20.”

20/20/20 Tatoo

Some people get up early but destroy the value of their morning routine by watching the news, surfing online, scanning social feeds and checking messages.

Don't do any of this when first waking up.

Here’s the neat thing: another key job of the Auriga was to stand behind the military general known as the ‘Dux’ and whisper the words ‘Memento, homo’ carefully into his ear as he placed the laurel crown on his head.” “What does that mean?” asked the entrepreneur. Today she’d dressed in faded jeans, a bright red t-shirt with a V-neck and white running shoes. Her hair was styled in the ponytail that she liked. She had her bracelets on. And she absolutely radiated optimism. “‘Memento homo’ is Latin for ‘remember you are only a man,’” the billionaire answered. “The Auriga did this to keep the leader’s arrogance in check and to help the leader manage the inevitable invitation to egotism that all great success inescapably brings.

Momento homo

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy I walked you through earlier. We always perform in a way that is aligned with the way we see ourselves. And so, our thinking creates our results. And the less we value ourselves and our powers,” he went on, “the less power we have access to.”

Self fufulling prophecy.

“As you can see from this learning model, there are three twenty-minute pockets to install and then practice to mastery-level. The first twenty-minute pocket of The 20/20/20 Formula requires that you Move. Simply put, doing some sweaty exercise first thing every morning will revolutionize the quality of your days. The second pocket encourages you to Reflect for twenty minutes. This segment is designed to help you reaccess your natural power, boost self-awareness, dissolve your stress, fuel your happiness and restore your inner peace in an era of acute overstimulation and excessive activity. And you’ll round out this sixty-minute Victory Hour of personal fortification with twenty minutes centered around ensuring that you Grow, whether that means investing some time reading a book that will improve your understanding of how the best lives were made or an article that will refine your professional prowess or listening to an audio session on how the virtuosos accomplish their unusual results or watching an educational video that will show you how to lift your relationships or increase your finances or deepen your spirituality. As you cats now know, the leader who learns the most wins.

20/20/20 Move,reflect,grow

“One of the most helpful things I’ve ever learned from The Spellbinder was that starting my mornings with a strong workout—pretty much right after I jumped out of bed—was of the utmost importance. I still remember his actual words—and they were firm: ‘You must begin your day with intense exercise. This is a non-negotiable. Otherwise The 20/20/20 Formula won’t work. And I’ll take back your membership in The 5 AM Club.’”

We must do intense exercise when we first wakeup

“It’s a fabulous question!” exclaimed the tycoon. “And sure. Like I’ve suggested, buy an old-school alarm clock—that’s what I use. As I said in Agra, you never want to sleep with any technology in your bedroom. I’ll explain why soon. Once you have your alarm clock, advance the time on it from the actual time to thirty minutes ahead. Then set the alarm for 5:30 AM.”

Use a old school alarm for the 5 AM Club

“What if I want to exercise for longer than twenty minutes?” “Totally cool,” noted the billionaire. “This morning routine isn’t written in stone like those words carved into that obelisk up there,” he added as he pointed up to the monument sitting on a small platform just above the Spanish Steps. “Take all I’m sharing and then make it yours. Customize it to fit your preferences and make it bespoke, to suit your lifestyle.”

We can exercise longer than 20 minutes for our morning routine

“That would be a giant gift to give to myself—and to my business,” acknowledged the entrepreneur. “I’m realizing I spend so much of my time doing and reacting, and so little of my time deliberating and planning. You’ve talked about how the great ones leverage periods of isolation. I’ve read that many famous geniuses had a habit of sitting in solitude for hours with nothing more than a pad of paper and a pen for capturing the insights that would start flashing across the screen of their imaginations.”

Silence and soulitude create genuis.

‘Twenty years from now,’ a quote I think comes from Mark Twain says, ‘you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’”

We will be dissapointed by the things we didn't do.

“Let me get to the point of these gifts my assistant brought us,” the billionaire continued. “During the ‘reflection’ pocket of The 20/20/20 Formula, another absolutely winning move is to write in a journal. And so I had these made for you by an Italian craftsperson. Hope they work wonders for you.”

We have to write in journals

What I’m trying to explain is this: difficult feelings that you don’t find a healthy way to remove become repressed, which creates stress, poor productivity and even disease.” “Cool diagram,” acknowledged the artist. “Are you saying that if I don’t feel the uncomfortable feelings, they build up and get stuck inside me to the point where I could get sick?”

Unexpressed emotions lead to physical sickness

“You need to feel a wound to heal a hurt,” the billionaire continued with precision.

You need to feel a wound to heal hurt.

Truth speaks in the solitude of the day’s earliest light. And then carry this breathtaking knowledge with you, through the remaining hours of the gift we call a day.”

Truth speaks in solitude when the day starts

stoic philosophy by Seneca, the Roman statesmen: “‘Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts select one to be thoroughly digested that day.’”

Learn things to fortify you against poverty or death.

See, you don’t receive success and influence only because of what you want. You attract it into your life based on who you are—as a person and as a producer.

You don't recieve what you want, you recieve what you are.

Here’s a concept fairly foreign in today’s age: read a book. Study the lives of the greatest men and women of the past by consuming their autobiographies during the ‘Grow’ pocket. Learn about the latest advancements in psychology. Devour works on innovation and communication, productivity and leadership, prosperity and history. And watch documentaries on how the best do what they do—and grew into who they are. Listen to audiobooks on personal mastery, creativity and business-building.

Books and audiobooks to read.

Vespas.

Micro scooter

Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, who said, “The early morning has gold in its mouth.” And, on the back of his helmet was printed lettering that read, “Rise First. Die Last.”

The early morning has gold in its mouth.

but science now confirms that one of the primary ways we bring on an early death is by not sleeping enough.”

Not sleeping enough brings early death

“What makes genius-level performance is a delicate balance between the mastery of your morning routine and the optimization of your nightly ritual. You won’t be able to orchestrate The 20/20/20 Formula Stone walked you through this morning if you don’t sleep properly.”

You have to optimize your night routine to reach genuis level performance

“That’s great to hear. Because we’re in midst of a ferocious global sleep recession,” vocalized The Spellbinder, clearly articulating the dramatic languaging he’d become internationally known for.

We are in a global sleep recession

I could go deeper and explain how the light of your devices activates photoreceptors called ‘intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells’ that limit melatonin production and negatively affect your circadian rhythm, which hurts your sleep—but you get my point here.”

Technical name for light messing up meletonin

“Well, when you sleep—and the key here is not only the quantity of sleep but the quality of your sleep states—your neurons shrink by 60% as cerebral spinal fluid washes through your brain. It’s also been discovered that the lymphatic system, which was previously believed to be only in your body, is in your skull, too. All this means that we, as human beings, have evolutionarily architected a powerful process to essentially wash the brain so it stays in optimum condition. And this cleansing mechanism only happens while we sleep.”

Our brain washes itself once it gets enough sleep

And here’s the real key: to maximize the process of the brain being washed properly and HGH being produced excellently so you expand your creativity, productivity, vitality and longevity, you need five complete ninety-minute sleep cycles. That’s what the scientific studies are now confirming. That’s seven and a half hours of sleep each night. You also should know that research proves that it’s not only sleep-deprivation that kills. Over-sleep, nine or more hours, also has been shown to shorten life.”

How to maximise brain washing a hgh

“Sort of like Mahatma Gandhi’s words ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world,’” added the entrepreneur, her face glowing in the soft light of the candle as she rubbed her new ring. “I read a little about his life before I went to sleep last night.” “With all due respect,” pronounced The Spellbinder compassionately, “Mahatma Gandhi’s actual words have been adjusted over the years, to become a sound bite that suits a culture experiencing a collective deficit of attention.” “What he actually said,” interrupted the billionaire, “was, ‘If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward him. We need not wait to see what others do.’”

Be the change you want to see,Gandhi Quote

People who hurt others really are hurting within themselves.

Hurt people hurt people

It had been three weeks since the visit to Rome. In that time, the entrepreneur had been doing wind sprints for twenty minutes at 5 AM each morning along with some serious weight training. After that at, 5:20 AM, she’d use the tranquility of the second pocket to contemplate quietly, write lists of the things she was grateful for in her new journal and then meditate. Finally, at 5:40 AM, she’d listen to an audiobook about a business maverick or read something on the subjects of productivity, teamwork and leadership. She’d also, and this was a hard one, broken the addiction to technology that had been her lifeline—as well as her escape from producing her greatest work. And her diversion from being fully present to life.

Entreprenurs morning routine

Always remember that the greatest of leaders were all servant leaders. The less you make it all about you, and the more your obsession focuses on the upliftment of others, the more you’ll increase your identity as a genuine empire-builder. And grow into a history-maker.”

Servant leaders

In that moment, she realized that on the other side of every tragedy lives a triumph. And beyond adversity exists a bridge into enduring victory, if one has the eyes to see it.

On the other side of teagedy isz triumph

Over Edison’s face, in an edgy modern art script, were the inventor’s words: “The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.”

The best thinking is done in solitude

“It goes to the point you made in Mauritius about us waking up with a limited amount of cognitive bandwidth and every distraction that steals our attention lowers our chance to do masterful work. Because we leave attention residue on every diversion that we allow into our workplace—and lifespace. And if we’re not really careful, we’ll end up with the digital dementia referred to on the last diagram you shared with us in Rome.

Mental fatigue and digital dementia

Tactic #1: The Tight Bubble of Total Focus (TBTF) The Insight: An addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production. Your attraction to digital interruption is costing you your fortune—financially, cognitively, energetically, physically and spiritually. To have the income and impact only a few people currently have, you need to run your days like very few performers currently do. The Tight Bubble of Total Focus is a metaphorical moat that you build around your assets of genius, so they not only stay strong—they increase. The five primary assets that all superproducers defend are mental focus, physical energy, personal willpower, original talent and daily time. Your bubble has a porous membrane that encircles it so that you decide what information, which people and the nature of the activities that enter your orbit. Anything negative, toxic and impure gets blocked at the gate. Essentially, this way of being in the world is your bulletproof defense system to reject any stimuli that would decry your greatness.

TBTF=Tight bubble of total focus

Specific application ideas include selling your television, avoiding the news for the remainder of your days, staying out of noisy shopping malls where you buy things you don’t need, unfriending energy-draining people you follow on social platforms, turning off all notifications while you’re in the TBTF and deleting apps with constant announcements.

specific application ideas for TBTF= Tight Bubble Total Focus

Tactic #2: The 90/90/1 Rule The Insight: Doing real work versus artificial work, daily and with absolute consistency, will give you a Gargantuan Competitive Advantage born of mastery. Productivity of virtuoso-level quality is rare. And the marketplace pays most for something that is scarce. Legendary achievers concentrate all their attention and effort on one core project at a time so they harness the fullness of their cognitive capacity and their precious energy on releasing glorious products that turn their industry on their head. To work like this, you need to install the daily habit of exploiting your best professional hours to offer your finest productive results. When you show up for work, it’s not the time to shop online, to gossip or to check messages. It’s showtime. For the superproducer.

90/90/1 rule

Tactic #3: The 60/10 Method The Insight: Research supports that the greatest performers don’t work in a linear way—working harder and longer with the hope of arriving at stronger and better results. Instead, the way elite creatives do what they do is by understanding the power of oscillation. They structure their work cycles so that they alternate bursts of deep focus and ferocious intensity of performance with periods of real rest and full recovery. In other words, they work in a balance—and cycle awesome output with times to refuel their assets of genius so they don’t deplete them. Armed with data concluding that human beings do their most astonishing work when they are fresh and relaxed versus exhausted and stressed, genuine pros dedicated to the glorification of their genius operate in a mode of pulsation, operating more like sprinters than marathoners.

60/10 method

Ideas for this recovery cycle include going for a quick walk in fresh air, reading a book that will advance your leadership or personal mastery, meditating, visualizing or listening to energizing music with headphones on like many championship athletes do before they step onto the court, so that their brain’s attention shifts from the ruminating and worrying behaviors of the left hemisphere into the creativity and flow of the right section. After ten wonderful minutes of regeneration, go back and perform your next sixty-minute work segment, full of inspiration, excellence and ingenuity.

Ideas for recovery cycle

Tactic #4: The Daily 5 Concept The Insight: Studies show that the most effective business leaders are at their productive peak on the days when, even if they’ve faced some serious setbacks, they’ve actively engaged their mindset on the progress they’ve made. In so doing, they’ve inoculated themselves from the self-sabotaging influence of the brain’s negativity bias. One of the great keys to terrific performance, then, is to train your attention on making consistent 1% wins and micro-achievements throughout each hour of your workday. Small daily achievements, when done consistently over time, definitely do lead to stunning results. And by deliberately reflecting on the areas where you are moving ahead, you’ll insulate your ambition, guard your confidence and defeat the dangerous trickster of fear, so you get amazing feats done.

5 daily concepts

Tactic #5: The 2nd Wind Workout (2WW) The Insight: You’ve now discovered the beautiful neuroscience behind daily exercise. Moving the body regularly lifts your concentration, speeds up the processing potency of your brain as well as accelerating its learning capacity, raises your energy, elevates your optimism, helps you sleep better via the production of more melatonin and promotes longevity through the release of human growth hormone (HGH), along with the lengthening of your telomeres. Telomeres keep the ends of our chromosomes from fraying—they’re like plastic caps at the tips of shoelaces. Aging shortens our telomeres, which is why they are sometimes compared to a bomb fuse. The powerful point here is that it’s well-documented that exercise slows this shortening, helping you stay healthy longer. You should also note that meditation, a diet rich in whole foods, proper sleep quality and intermittent fasting (which The Spellbinder calls The 16/8 Dividend because you don’t eat during a sixteen-hour fasting window and then break the fast over an eight-hour period) have all proven to protect our telomeres from degenerating. Given the empirically based facts substantiating the absolutely transformative power of exercise, why would you do only one workout a day? Why not use this regimen to increase your vitality massively so you not only outlive your industry peers but hack aging as you enjoy an astoundingly happy and productive life?

2WW 2nd wind workout

Tactic #6: The 2 Massage Protocol (2MP) The Insight: Studies have demonstrated that massage therapy is a modality that generates significant improvements in brain performance, mood, your ability to fight stress, and in terms of your general wellness. The benefits of a massage include a 31% reduction of cortisol (the fear hormone) levels; a 31% increase in dopamine (the neurotransmitter of motivation); a 28% elevation of serotonin (the neurochemical responsible for regulating anxiety and raising happiness); reduced muscle tension; improved pain relief via the sending of anti-inflammation messaging to muscle cells; and elevations in the signaling of those cells to make more mitochondria. The key here is to have a deep-tissue massage versus simple relaxation bodywork. It needs to hurt a little for it to work well. This awesome practice also reduces the stress that causes telomeres to degrade, optimizing your good health and maximizing your lifespan.

The 2 massage protocol

Tactic #7: Traffic University The Insight: People who commute a total of sixty minutes to and from work each day spend approximately twelve hundred days of their lives doing so—if they live an average human lifetime. That’s over three years spent in traffic or on a bus or in a train. And with the rise of the mega-commute, that time period is only growing. Most people sitting bumper to bumper are infecting themselves with toxic news, superficial banter on the radio and other negative stimulation that erodes production and dissolves inner peace. People on commuter trains or buses often sleep, daydream or play with their technology, in a chronic state of apathy. Be different.

The traffic university

The Implementation: Participating in Traffic University is all about leveraging your traveling time—whether to and from work or grocery shopping and errand running—to learn, expanding your professional prowess and personal knowledge. Specific ideas to help you do so include listening to audiobooks and consuming valuable podcasts. The fact is, even one new idea you learn in a book or online course could make you millions or even billions of dollars. Or multiply your creativity, productivity, vitality and spirituality exponentially. There is simply no other investment vehicle available today that will yield a higher return than investing in your education and growth.

Listen to audiobooks and podcast

Tactic #8: The Dream Team Technique The Insight: Professional athletes structure a full team to support their rise to Best in World (BIW). In this way, they are freed up to marshal their five assets of genius around the development of the expertise and powers that will cause them to become dominant at their sport. Michael Jordan wasn’t his own sports doctor and Muhammad Ali wasn’t his own boxing trainer. Superproducers outsource and then automate all activities except those within the realm of their mastery, allowing for purity of focus and freeing up huge amounts of time.

The Dream Team Technique, outsource and automate

Specific members of your Dream Team could include a fitness trainer who you work with regularly, a nutritionist, a massage therapist, a financial coach to fortify your fortune, a relationship adviser to help you maintain rich bonds with the important people in your life and a spiritual counselor to assist you in staying grounded on the eternal laws of a life well-lived.

Members to get in your dream team

Tactic #9: The Weekly Design System (WDS) The Insight: You now know that things that get scheduled are the things that get done. Designing a week without a granulated game plan for the seven days ahead of you is like attempting to summit Mont Blanc without a climb strategy or hiking into the deep woods without a compass. Yes, spontaneity and room for unexpected miracles are exceptionally important. Yet, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t show personal responsibility and human maturity by habituating a practice to architect a thoughtful and clear weekly script that amplifies your energy, organizes your choices and ensures balance.

The Weekly Design System

Tactic #10: The 60 Minute Student The Insight: The more you know, the better you will do. Legendary leaders all have boundless curiosity and a limitless appetite to grow into their greatest selves. And education truly is inoculation against disruption. Peak producers are lifetime learners. Be one of the formidable few who reclaim their heroism, cultivate their craft and materialize their genius by getting back to being a world-class student.

The 60 minute student, always keep learning.

As the billionaire sipped sweet, dark coffee, he explained that what makes the great men and women of the world exceptional, in part, is their implementation of a phenomenon known as “supercompensation.” Just as a muscle tears when you stress it to the edge of its capacity and then actually grows during the pause of recovery, your five assets of genius surge when you actively push them past their usual limits and then allow for a period of regeneration. Mr. Riley pointed to the framework on the paper and said, “See, cats, the little-known key to terrific success over the long term lies in a simple word: oscillation. I mentioned it in São Paulo, but you’re both ready to go deeper.”

Supercompensation

“And as you now know, The 5 Assets of Genius,” continued Mr. Riley as he looked at the diagram, “are your mental focus, your physical energy, your personal willpower, your original talent and your daily time. I repeat this so you’ll remember this. These primary assets are at their highest early in the morning. That’s why you want to start your day well and perform your most important pursuits during your most valuable hours instead of wasting this precious opportunity fooling around with your technology, watching the news or oversleeping.”

The 5 assets of genuis