The 20/20/20 Formula of the 5am Club
What will you do with the first hour of your day? Move. Reflect. Grow.
If you are staying on pace with the Fearless Journeys reading schedule for The 5am Club, then you should have now completed the first 14 chapters. For this past week, our assignment was to read and complete chapters 13 and 14.
If you haven’t been able to keep up with the readings, I hope these short summaries are keeping you informed of some of the great game changers for your daily routine.
Also: be sure to register here for the live session on June 22 @ 7:00 PM ET which will be led by Featured Innovator Alex Goryachev, a former chief innovation officer at Cisco Systems. He is now working on some great things with AI. No matter how innovative we are in business or technology, Alex knows it all starts with how we start our day. How will you start yours?
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In Chapter 13, we finally learn the 20/20/20 Formula!!
Our 5am Club crew has been taken to the island of Mauritius, then to India, and now to Italy. I wish Fearless Journeys could travel like that!
So what is the 20/20/20 routine? As we continue to remind people: the secret to the 5am Club isn’t necessarily to rise at 5:00 AM — although that is ideal. The secret is how you spend the first hour of your day.
“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 … such behavior comes from the need for a quick rush of dopamine — an escape from what is truly important.”
So there are 3 pockets to this hour, and this is really laid out well in this diagram on page 206 of the paperback (and displayed below).
The first 20-minute pocket requires that you MOVE.
The second 20-minute pocket encourages you to REFLECT.
The final 20-minutes is centered around ensuring that you GROW.
Why do you need to MOVE for the first 20 minutes?
Your cortisol level is the highest in the morning. Cortisol is the hormone of fear. When you move, it cleanses the cortisol. Your fears and anxieties will melt away. You’ll be ready for your Fearless Journey!
There’s also a vital link between physical fitness and cognitive ability.
Working out first thing in the morning also elevates your metabolism — it fuels the fat-burning engine of your body so you can burn any excess more efficiently and lean out more quickly. Your life will feel and work a hundred times better when you’re in the finest physical condition you’ve ever been in.
So: MOVE. You are encouraged to get into some intense movement that makes you sweat. You can go for a run. A brisk walk. Do some push-ups or maybe some burpees. The idea is to move.
Why do you need to REFLECT for 20 minutes?
Tranquility is the new luxury of our society — a society filled with noise.
During this Victory Hour, savor some stillness. Contemplate how you’re living and on who you hope to become.
This will help you develop a tremendous imagination, which is an important portal into a celebrated fortune.
Level this up even more by writing out a “Pre-Performance Blueprint.” This is simply a written statement of your ideal day ahead. Don’t worry if the day doesn’t go exactly to the blueprint (it probably won’t). The idea here is to visualize what the ideal day looks, setting the goals for what you want to accomplish, and do your best to pursue it.
Write in a journal — and don’t just write out the positive elements of your current life, but also the aspects of your experience that are causing discomfort and pain. This will you deal with them. Repressed feelings cause stress, poor productivity, and even disease.
This does not mean you have to live in the past. Quite the contrary. Dealing with your difficulties will help you move past them. Living in the past steals so much energy from most people. That’s why you must KEEP MOVING FORWARD.
Another game-changing activity in this REFLECT period of your Victory Hour is to meditate. For the faithful, this could even be time you set aside for prayer.
Go into this 20-minute sanctuary of silence and stillness each morning and remember all you truly are. “Truth speaks in the solitude of the day’s earliest light. And then carry on this breathtaking knowledge with you, throughout the remaining hours of the gift we call a day.”
Why do you need to use the final 20 minutes to GROW?
It’s an opportunity to deepen your knowledge base, increase your acumen, improve your expertise, and outlearn your competition.
Leadership on the outside begins within.
Don’t spend much time on meaningless entertainment. Invest in endless education.
This is a time you can review your goals, read (or listen to) a book, listen to a podcast, take an online course, or any number of “growth” activities. Maybe it’s time spent on using the resources of the Fearless Journeys community, including taking part in our book club!
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In Chapter 14, we are introduced to the essentialness of sleep. One of the primary ways we bring on death is by not sleeping enough.
But how do you sleep when you are encouraged to wake up at 5:00 AM?
You remember what Ben Franklin once said, right? “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Well he also said that “the early morning has gold in its mouth.”
Advance to 2023. We are in the midst of a ferocious global sleep recession. Some of the causes include:
The internet and social media
Blue light emitted from our tools of technology reduces the amount of melatonin within us.
This is why we need to sleep in a room that is separated from technology.
The all-time-greatest-winning quarterback Tom Brady said, “it’s a bedroom, not a tech cave.”
If you can, don’t even put a television in your bedroom and keep your computers, tablets, and smart phones out of your bedroom — at least after 8:00 PM and not anywhere during your Victory Hour. If you need an alarm clock, get an old school one. But if you must have your smart phone in your room as an alarm clock, put it on airplane mode and put it on the other side of your room so you are forced to get up to get it.
If Tom Brady can do it, most people can.
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So, how much sleep do you need? We are told here that you need five complete ninety-minute cycles. That’s seven and a half hours of sleep each night.
Over-sleep, nine or more hours, also has been show to shorten life.
The best way to also sleep is in a nice cool, dark room — and a technology-free room!
The chart below is found on page 232 of the paperback version of The 5am Club. It deconstructs your pre-sleep ritual. Think of this as the ideal way to wine down each day. This will help you get to sleep earlier.
This is especially helpful for those of us who can’t stop remaining productive. For entrepreneur-minded people, there is always some more work or thing to be doing to remain productive, at any hour of the day. What we have to realize is that by using our final waking hours of the day in this new way — to wind down — we are going to recharge our batteries and bring even more energy and perspective to the new day before us — a day that will begin at 5:00 AM.
Your ideal day might look like this — this chart below can be found on page 235. Not all of the details have been explained to us yet about the Amazing Day deconstruction, but it’s an outline we will learn even more about in the final two weeks we are spending on this book.
One final piece of wisdom from this chapter to keep in mind: “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.”
Remember, leadership begins within. And the ultimate transformation begins when you spend your early morning Victory Hour on the things that matter.
MOVE.
REFLECT.
GROW.
You can customize this to your liking. The exact details of how you spend those 20/20/20 Formula is not etched in stone. The idea here is to customize it in the closets way possible so you can indeed have the best start to your day.
Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life. Live Your Fearless Journey.
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By this time next week, complete chapters 15 and 16. We’re getting close to completing The 5am Club challenge. Keep going! Own your morning. Elevate your life.