The 5 AM CLUB: A Review

“Own your morning, Elevate your life.”

As the sun sets, it sets upon an incandescent ochre filter, on every surface it touches. There’s a mini volcano reflected in one’s eye while the sun melts into the abyss. One can spend days and days bidding farewell to the sun, and a healthy day, though, how often would one witness the sunrise? In today’s time, erratic and not very often. The 5 AM Club would want you to witness it. The 5 AM Club functions at sunrise. Leaders and prolific and successful people, whether Shri Narendra Modi or Shah Rukh Khan, have often said, “wake up early”. The book gives you hope and the reason for the same. It highlights how the time is directly proportional to the time we spend attached to our screen, television, phones, laptops. It is a scientific fact, that, staring at the screen at the brink of the night, induces an illusion in your brain and tricks it into believing that it is sunrise. Thus, causing the sleep pattern to topple. Sleep is a prerequisite for living, for longevity, and the book though promotes waking up at 5, prepares an outline for an ‘amazing’ day, which would, of course, end early. The book would be categorized as a self-help book, yet, it uses a character-driven narrative to preach the idea of waking up at 5 AM. The narrative deals with 3 characters and how they develop better life patterns whilst learning from each other, the characters being, an entrepreneur, an artist, and a billionaire. The billionaire is a rich and spiritually wealthy gentleman. He takes upon this journey to teach his new disciples the ideology of the 5 AM club. A club in which the members take an oath to wake up at 5 AM to five-fold their productivity. The story narrative lacks the depth of characters and their equations, although, considering it is a self-help book, it doesn’t affect the crux of the book. The book does succeed in making one realize the benefits of waking up early and taking control of your life. With technology, our emotional intelligence, our willpower, and self-discipline are long gone, this book would give you the push to get them back. With most self-help books, the authors give you a vague idea of what could be done, in this book, however, Robin Sharma has given a structured common to all solution for the problem of waking up early or sleeping late. It also focuses on developing better habits. The book promotes the idea of meditation too. The story, however, does not add a lot of value, considering it is based on several of the most exquisite places in the world. Below given is the list of the prime learnings from the book:

Key Learnings: 5 AM Club, as its name suggests, holds lessons and meanings, of getting up earlier, building a morning routine, and prioritizing our internal work, leading to external success. The book conveys intricate messages that could elevate our lives. 

1. 3 Step Success Formula: The 3-step success formula is based on better daily awareness, better daily choices, and better daily results. With every step, we lead to other positive consequences, the result being a success. This implies that with better awareness of our natural ability, we will be aware of how to install the 5 AM method in our morning routine. Consequently, the productivity will upgrade, leading to the rise from the community of superficiality into the community of granularity. Daily decisions shall be optimized with an enhanced level of insight, resulting in acceleration of leadership, accomplishment, and impact adequately. Certainly, taking better choices contributes toward harvesting great benefits. 

5/3/1-Creed of the Willpower Warrior: The 5/3/1 success formula talks about evolving into a warrior spirit by perceiving the 5 scientific truths behind excellent habits, 3 values of heroic habit makers, and 1 general theory of self-discipline. The formula suggests that we can evolve and grow our willpower with the practice of consistency. This implies waking up early, making a well-defined routine, and explicitly following it to gain never-ending results. 

20/20/20 Formula: It is an imperative example that the way we start our day shapes the rest of our day. The 20-20-20 formula divides our wake-up schedule into three divisions: exercise, reflection, and learning. The initial 20 minutes of exercise in the morning will make us sweat, decreasing the cortisol (hormone related to stress and fear), and releasing BDNF, which helps create new neural pathways quicker. The next 20 minutes can be utilized for meditation, visualizing big goals, drafting to-dos for the day, writing down ideas, or inspiring thoughts. Hence, this time is specifically used for reflection. The last 20 minutes is to keep ourselves away from social media, news, and mindless entertainment. During these 20 minutes, it is preferable and recommended to learn something real, id Est reading a book, studying about someone, taking an online course et cetera.  

The 4 Interior Empires: According to the author of the 5 AM Club, Robin Sharma, a person apprehends the 4 interior empires; mindset, heart set, soul set, and health set. Mindset is about working on our minds and investing time along with energy in the group. While a heart set deals with a heart free of evil, anger, fear, sadness, and disappointment, health set on the other hand deals with working on our health, which is inclusive of eating properly and exercising. Soul set, however, is about growing our spirituality, with meditation and reflecting upon ourselves.