I Will Never Adopt a 5 am Morning Routine — and Why You Shouldn’t Either
I will not be joining the “5 am club” any time soon, and yes, I am still productive and you are too
I can’t pinpoint when it happened, but suddenly I was bombarded with YouTube videos and online content about the “5 am club”.
What is that, I thought to myself?
I kept seeing self-help articles, YouTube videos, and posts about how adopting a 5 am morning routine will elevate your life and maximize your productivity. And why wouldn’t it, it’s the routine that millionaires and billionaires do!
Ah, what? Am I missing something, here?
Why have we created a culture that is essentially telling Millennials and even Gen Z’er’s that we need to adopt a 5 am morning routine in order to be successful. Huh?
For anyone who is not familiar with this concept, it is often credited to Robin Sharma, who is a productivity guru best known for his best-selling books titled The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, as well as The 5 am Club: Own Your Morning, Elevate Your Life. I am not going to pretend that I follow his work and life, but all I know is that he is highly influential in this concept.
Essentially, the 5 am morning routine is meant to consist of a 20/20/20 formula that looks like this:
- 5:00 am — 5:20 am: Move your body
- 5:20 am — 5:40 am: Reflect
- 5:40 am — 6:00 am: Grow — aka read something
- And then go on and be productive with your day
Don’t get me wrong, none of this sounds bad — at first glance. These are all great ways to start your morning if you want to do that. Now what I have a problem with is the way that the “5 am club” is marketed to Millennials and even older Gen Z’ers.
My Issues with a 5 am Morning Routine
All the more power to you — if waking up at 5 am is something that you enjoy and actually allows you to be productive during the day, good for you, and I fully support it. However, I hate to break it to anyone reading this, but waking up at 5 am, specifically, will not suddenly make you more productive.
Repeat after me, waking up…
