Sure waking up is early and sleeping early is essential and healthy, but let’s be more specific by learning from ‘Robin Sharma’

What to expect?

Robin speaks about how waking up early at 5 AM, and investing that time into learning and doing complicated tasks is a good idea, and why successful people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and many more have had great, on-going success that may have exceeded their lifetime

Concepts are taken from 5 AM Club

1. Pick who you choose to be around very carefully
2. Appreciate the little things you’ve, you never know what was yesterday a “taken for granted”, to be “good ol’ days”
3. Waking up @ 5 AM is not just healthy, it’s phenomenal
4. 5 AM work sometimes can shortcut days of work in mere hours or sometimes minutes
5. Success comes from tiny details
6. Avoiding distractions and focusing on what’s important
7. Labeling and prioritizing important things to do is an important skill (yet, not the most obvious)
8. Life is short, focus on leaving a good memory of a life well-spent

My summary

How to reach your goals & how your environment affects that

During the early chapters, Robin explains how important your inner circle is, explaining the effect of your environment on you, from befriending negative people to people who inspire you & encourage you to become better

If you want to become something, befriend people who already have it

Key to fulfillment & Wealth

True wealth and fulfillment comes from uplifting and positively affecting other people’s lives, in the rush of today’s technology, appreciating little things becomes common, hence becoming accustomed to them, labeling them as ‘Ordinary’, hence feeling dissatisfied even if you have everything one would wish for

The secret ‘5 AM Club’

Waking up every day @ 5 AM not only is healthy, but a good investment in your mind that can easily be translated into physical wealth and an extra bonus of Wisdom

Fixation on goals save time, energy & money (and vice versa)

Our brains tend to feel in control and really great when we have simple, trackable goals in front of us, all our brain resources are put into it, and hence, we gain a sense of assurance However, when we are surrounded by lots of distractions and multiple, unrelated goals, chaos happens, because our brains don’t feel in control anymore, and we fall into prioritization hell, shorter focus life-span and eventually get burnt out at a higher rate (mostly by not noticing that we haven’t had a break in a long time due to all the things we need to finish)

Productivity is not just a great mental & physical state

We often think that productivity is related to sleeping well and/or being present or active, however, there are other factors to it, for instance, human is not just an IQ or a BMI, there comes also how you’re doing emotionally and spiritually So make sure you take care of those besides setting your schedule and sticking to it 😄

True Potential gain lies outside your comfort zone

Like muscles, challenging them with working out can lead to them growing and improving, similarly with your mind and personalities

It turns out that the human brain has a great potential for something called neuronal plasticity, or in other words, being highly malleable. It appears that challenging our brains — for example, by learning a new skill — leads to actual changes in the adult brain. — A Harvard’s Health Blog

Waking up early is not enough

Waking up at 5 AM may not be enough, either as a goal, or an achievement, however, what you do when you wake up, is what matters the most to you and your future goals Robin took the approach of breaking down the first hour into 3 parts

The 3 Pockets

The 3 Pockets is basically a 20/20/20 Rule of chunking your first hour into 3 activities of 20 minutes each.

Robin advises to chunk it like this

• The 1st 20 mins could be invested into exercising
• The 2nd 20 mins could be invested into meditation
• The 3rd 20 mins could be invested into learning

Action Time! 👏

I have two problems to tackle, so I planned a system to get over it

Sleeping early

I mean, c’mon we’re programmers, we tend to tick late @ night, right? Nope, that’s a lie from my subconscious to steal another episode or do something I’ll end up regretting 4 hrs later after being completely tired and no longer able to maintain opening my eyes

So, I am doing something simple to not overcomplicate it

1. Begin Wind down routine at 9:00
preparing some warm drink, brushing teeth, etc…
2. By 9:30, my phone goes into a parental mode where only select apps are allowed
   1. [Balance]
   2. [Sleep Cycle]
3. I meditate to release any tension or stress while remembering what to be grateful about

   Fighting the ‘Just 5 more mins’

4. Making sure I don’t break my sleep cycles ([read more about it here])
5. As soon as I am conscious that I woke up, immediately remove any blanket and run my hand over my face as If I was washing it
6. Keep my phone away (I usually fail here and end up cold in winter after I noticed that I didn’t get out of bed, rather woke up to sync myself with Twitter’s feed or Facebook’s 😆)

Conclusion

All in all, this happened to be my first book to ever finish, as much as I’m excited, as much as I really loved sharing and grooming my thoughts about it

If you wanted to get the book, you can find it here on Amazon, however, just a disclaimer so I put this off my chest, any link to any book in this series is an affiliate link