Hello Millennial readers!

I don’t know about you but I love my sleep and I feel like we have been covering a lot on productivity. Especially now that most of us are working remotely. 

There is a common saying that “time is precious” and a lot of affirmations about time management. However, I believe that though things are moving fast, finding the balance to include rest time is equally important. With this in mind, here is a book that comes highly recommended: The 5 Am Club.

“Take excellent care of the front end of your day and the rest of the day will pretty much take care of itself. Own your morning, elevate your life.” – Robin Sharma.

In this book, The 5 AM Club, Robin Sharma uses a story to illustrate his belief that rising early is the key to productivity and success. The story involves four main characters: the spellbinder, the artist, the entrepreneur, and the homeless man. The artist, entrepreneur, and the homeless man meet at a life-changing event by the Spellbinder. The homeless man engages these two people in a conversation that’s full of quotes and lessons. At first, the entrepreneur and the artist doubt him given that he is disguised as a poor man. They even go ahead to insinuate that the expensive watch he is wearing is stolen. This is a clear illustration of judging the book by its cover. Eventually, when they start to pay attention to what he is telling them, they realize that he is actually very wise.

When I first heard of this book, I thought it would be a typical self-help book. Don’t get me wrong, I love this genre, but not when it’s the cliché format of rules and tactics to achieve your goals.  However, as soon as I started to read it I learned that it wasn’t the ordinary self-help genre. This book is a fictional story with hidden life lessons.

The first concept is the victory hour. Waking up at 5 am is no good if you waste time, not doing anything productive. Robin presents a plan: 20-20-20 structure. From 5:00 am to 5:20 am is about moving: exercise. The point is to get your heart rate up and get your body to release cortisol upon waking. 5:20 am to 5:40 is for reflection: write down what you need to accomplish on the day ahead, anything on your mind, practice meditation, focus, and think clearly. 5:40 am to 6:00 am focuses on learning: read a book, listen to a podcast, research on a topic, use this time to get your brain kicked up in high gear. 

‘Anyway, let me simply say that the place where your greatest discomfort lies is also the place where your largest opportunity lives. The beliefs that disturb you, the feelings that threaten you, the projects that unnerve you, and the unfoldments of your talents that the insecure part of you is resisting are precisely where you need to go. Lean deeply towards those doorways into your bigness as a creative producer, seeker of personal freedom, and possibilitarian.

And then embrace those beliefs, feelings, and projects quickly instead of structuring your life in a way that’s designed to dismiss them. Walking into the very things that scare you is how you reclaim your forgotten power. And how you get back the innocence you lost after childhood.’- Robin Sharma.

The greatest lesson from this book is that for us millennials and gen zs, we need to be comfortable being uncomfortable for us to step into the greatness we dream of. I would highly recommend The 5 AM Club. On top of this, the delivery is just perfect, because instead of imposing rules and tactics, it has used a story to pass the same message across.  Aside from just talking about the concept of waking up early, it also incorporates other valuable lessons about the dangers of the world today and how they are affecting us. It is important to own every day for optimum productivity.

Ruth Kimani ❤❤❤