Own Your Mornings: 3 Tactics for World-Class Habits and Routines

Learning the habits and routines in my book The 5AM Club is changing the lives of millions of people because starting your morning well is a game-changer. The way you begin your day dramatically defines the way your day will unfold. 

Remember that change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. Everything you now find easy was once hard. So just start. And stay with installing the 5am rising habit for 66 days. The research of University College London says it takes about that long for a new habit to become automatic.

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Transcript

Tactic number one for you to deliver consistently amazing days is early rising. The great novelist Stephen King gets up early. Nelson Mandela got up early. So many of the titans of industry get up early. The way you start your day dramatically determines the way your day unfolds. What most people do is they get up in the morning and they run out into the day and then they spend their days catching their hours. I want you to over 66 days build the practice. You know you can
do it. You have the neuroplastic brain. And then once you master this habit of getting up early, give yourself this one hour, the Victory Hour to work on yourself. Second tactic to build consistently great days is mastering the polite no. Most people say yes to everything. Want to go to a movie tonight? Yes. Do you want to have dinner tonight? Yes. I know you're working right now at work on a really powerful project, but would you like to have a coffee? Yes. Would you like to take a trip with me? Yes. Would you like to watch this TV show? Yes. Would you like to
join this social group? Yes. Would you like to join this online chat? Yes. So many members of the majority say yes to things they know. really won't move the needle and get them to the life they desire. Remember another one of my brain tattoos. To have the results only 5 % of the population has, you've got to be willing to do what 95 % of the population is absolutely unwilling to do. And one of the things when I mentor the billionaires, when I mentor the movement-makers, when I men
tor the CEOs of industry dominant companies, When I mentor the great artists, many of the great artists, when I mentor movie stars, the best of the best, those people who consistently create creative and productive days, they don't really care what people think about them. I'm not saying they're rude, but many of them are masters of the polite known. They're so clear on their vision, they're so clear on their priorities, they're so clear on their philosophy, they're so clear on their strategy and the habits that they want to install and live by. And they're so
clear on delivering consistently great days that they just say no a lot. So I want you to start practicing no. And you might say, well, why are so many people excellent at saying yes to trivial things? It is because we are tribal. It is because we have a neurobiological, and I would even say spiritual instinct to fit in. Because thousands of years ago, when we lived in ancient times on the savanna, When we were primitive, if we strayed from the herd, we would be eaten by saber-toothed tigers. We would die of starvation. We would be captured and killed by warring tribes.
And so we have developed this instinct to survive, which is we just fit in. You have to hack that instinct and you have to say, you know what? I will be different for most people because again, to have the results only 5 % of the population has, I've got to do what most people won't do. The next idea that is tactic number three for building great days is a very disruptive idea. will tell you that right now, but it has been ultra valuable to the billionaires and the titans of industry and the movement creators that I've been mentoring. And it's called the five great hours rule. You know, most producers spend an entire week to get five glorious great hours of real work done. I want you to think about that. Most people spend an entire day at work, let's say eight, nine, 10, sometimes 12 hours, and they might only get half an hour or an hour of really valuable, let's call it masterwork done. I'm encouraging you to start working only five hours a day. Five hours a day. Because I think the way our world works doesn't really work very well. The way most people work is based on the factory age. It's when people were working on lines in factories, producing widgets and producing pieces of, let's say products. And so the more they would work on the factory line, the more widgets they would produce. Well, now we are not in the factory era anymore. We're in the cognitive era. You are paid to create
great ideas. You are paid to do masterwork and push magic into the world. And so what I'm encouraging you to do is only to work five hours a day. But during those five hours, you do real work. Your work is fiery work. Your work is robust. It's beautiful. It's magnificent work. You don't chit chat. You don't play with
your digital devices. You don't check your notifications. You don't go have coffee with people when you're in flow state. Five hours of world-class work. Let's say four or five days a week will completely change the game for you and allow you to do the best work you've ever done over your life. And then you might ask me, Robin, okay, so let's say I started at eight and I finish at one o'clock, what do I do after that? Go on a mountain bike ride. Take your family to lunch. Take a nap. Go get a massage. Go for a nature walk. Read a book. Go to an art gallery. Go watch a
film. Try some new food. Have some fun. As you know, active recovery is so important to exceptional performance. The great producers work in bursts of intensity. When they work, they really work, and then they recover and regenerate and refuel, and their ideas incubate during that rest and recovery time, and then they come back the next day, five more hours of great work.