The Truth About Following Someone Else's Morning Routine

If you have ever tried the 5 AM Club or the Miracle Morning and felt like you failed at it, this episode is going to feel like a deep breath. So many of us have downloaded the perfect morning routine, set the early alarm, committed to the exact sequence of activities, and then watched the whole thing fall apart within a week. And when it falls apart, we do not blame the routine. We blame ourselves.

In this episode, I am breaking down the 5 AM Club, where it came from, and the one detail about the person who created it that changes how you should think about the entire approach. I looked into the research, the formula, and the man behind the book, and what I found is something almost nobody talks about when they are handing out morning routine advice. If you have ever wondered why these expert routines work beautifully for some people and feel impossible for you, this is the conversation you have been waiting for.

What You'll Learn:

• What the 5 AM Club actually is, including the exact formula it is built on and where it came from
• The one thing about the creator of this routine that should change how you evaluate any productivity advice
• The piece of the morning routine conversation that almost no expert is willing to talk about
• What a morning routine is really supposed to do for you, and why it has nothing to do with how productive your day is

Mentioned in the Episode:
Learn my step-by-step process for building a morning routine around your real life and personality, not someone else's in Master Your Morning: www.megansumrell.com/morning

The FREE Master Your Morning Event is Back!
Join me July 20 - 24 to discover YOUR perfect morning routine.
☀️ www.megansumrell.com/morning

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Thanks for tuning in!
Megan 🩷🐝

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friends, if you've ever tried any of the expert morning routines, such as the Miracle Morning or the 5 a.m. club, and felt like you just failed at it, this episode is for you. Welcome to the Work Life Harmony Podcast. Guess what? You don't have to feel constantly overwhelmed, exhausted, and stressed out. There is another way. When you have the right systems and tools to plan and manage your time, you can live a life of harmony. If you're ready to stop feeling overwhelmed, this is the show for you. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Work Life Harmony Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about kind of productivity expert morning routines, specifically something called the 5 a.m. Club. I was fairly new to this recently, and it's not something I've ever directly talked about. So that's what we're going to be breaking down here today. Now, before we dive into this, if you have a friend, family member, et cetera, in your life who continually shares with you like just how crazy their morning is every morning, trying to just get everybody going, make sure you share this episode with her because it may be that she's following some bad productivity advice. All right, let's go ahead and dive in. Recently, I started seeing this mention of something called the 5 a.m. Club in my social media feeds. And specific people were swearing by it. And they're like, okay, I'm I've implemented the 5 a.m. club. It's a game changer. So of course it piqued my interest and it sent me down a rabbit hole of actually researching what was this 5 a.m. club. It actually comes from a book. And because I always believe it's very important to be researching the person behind it. So did some research on the person behind this book. And so today I'm going to be breaking down kind of what is the 5 a.m. club, because it has to do with a very specific morning routine, the brain behind it, so that you can decide if this is something that maybe is worth implementing in your life or not. All right. So first let's talk about what is the 5 a.m. club? Again, this stemmed from a book that was written around December of 2018-ish. And there's a bunch of, it's kind of a parable or fable, if you will, inside of the book. But the core teaching around this concept of the 5 a.m. club is something that the author calls the victory hour. And that victory hour is from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. And during this window is when you want to implement the 2020-20 formula, meaning 20 minutes, phase one, 20 minutes, phase two, 20 minutes for phase three. So here's what those 20 minutes look like. The first 20 minutes, so from 5 a.m. to 520, should be movement, right? You're doing exercise and really suggested more rigorous exercise, like getting a sweat going, getting your heart rate up and going. Then the next 20 minutes, so from 5:20 to 540, is time to reflect. So journaling, meditating, et cetera. And then the last 20 minutes is 20 minutes to grow, meaning personal development time. And it needs to be done in that order: 20 minutes to move, 20 minutes to reflect, 20 minutes to grow. Now, one of the things that they or that he kind of puts as a caveat with this, which I think is really important because I agree with this 100%, is he is reinforcing the fact that it takes 66 days to form a habit. Right. A lot of people like to say, oh, it's three weeks to form a habit. It's not the real science and research out there, lots of people have landed on. It's actually more like 66 days. I want to share that because what I love about you know what he's teaching in this book is saying, hey, this isn't like, this isn't some hot take, don't go try this for a couple of days, right? They're saying it really does take 66 days for you to actually form a habit. And so it's like, okay, that's great, right? Because anytime someone's promising a quick win or a hack, I always get very uncomfortable with it. So that's kind of what the premise of the 5 a.m. club is. Now, I think it's important to understand who wrote this and who is teaching this. The author of the book is Robin Sharma. And at the time he wrote this, he was in kind of his early to mid-50s. At that season of life, he was serving as a leadership consultant to executives. All right. So he was in that leadership consultant space. His children were grown. All right. He did not have young children in his house. I always think that's really important to land on. And this was a man of significant wealth. Anytime I am learning a tip, a strategy, especially one that doesn't have a lot of science backing, which the 5 a.m. club book did not have tons of science backing in it. I always think it's really important to understand who are you learning this from? What is their background, especially when they're making prescriptive rules on specific times of your day and what you should be doing? I'm always interested in knowing what their household looks like, right? That has a huge factor that most people always ignore when they're taking productivity and time management tips and tricks. What I want to shift into now is kind of like, hey, what do I think about this 5 a.m. club? What did he get right? Because there's some good stuff in there. But more importantly, what I want you as the listener to be thinking about anytime you stumble across or hear about an expert teaching a very specific and prescriptive morning routine or any routine for that matter, especially when there's an actual timetable connected to it. All right. So do I think that this 5 a.m. club routine of the 20, 20, 20 is wrong? Absolutely not. Right. Clearly, that is a routine that works really, really well for him. And it is designed for a very specific life. If you're going to wake up at 5 a.m. every morning and do the 20, 20, 20, there is an underlying assumption that 99% of the time, that hour is yours. Now, why do I say 99%? You might be sick, right? There might be a day where you can't wake up at 5 a.m. But it's assuming that, of course, I can just wake up and have that hour to myself with no interruptions. Now, if you have young children at home, some of them are waking up well before 6 a.m. So what do we do in that scenario? It's also assuming that you're likely getting to bed at a decent enough hour that waking up at 5 a.m. means that you're not depriving yourself of sleep. And that's one thing that I wish there was more talking about when people are describing, you know, this wake up at 5 a.m. I'm like, okay, but what do your evenings look like and when are you going to bed? Because maybe you've got young kids and they're still waking up in the middle of the night, right? And so maybe you're having to get up at 2 a.m. for a feeding and you're not rolling back into bed at 3 a.m. Maybe 5 a.m. is not a good, a good wake-up time for you. Maybe it's more important to give your body rest. Now, what do I love about the 5 a.m. club? Here's what I think he gets 100% right. Okay. Protecting a pocket of time for yourself every single morning before you jump into service mode, work mode, external productivity mode, et cetera, is something I agree with 1000%. And it's something I teach regularly. The idea behind the 5 a.m. club and either other, you know, other things such as the miracle morning, what the real instinct here is to say, hey, take ownership of how your day starts. And I 1,000% support that. And there is a ton of research out there around the importance of having some time for your brain and your body to kind of connect with itself in the morning, right? Before you are jumping into service mode to others. However, that said, what I do not necessarily agree with and what I don't love telling people to do is I am a hard no when it comes to implementing a prescribed routine or way to start your day. And when I say a prescribed routine, what I mean is when they are saying it needs to be at a specific time andor it needs to be specific activities. All right. So with a 5 a.m. club, it is very much both specific time from 5 to 6 a.m. And then it's the activities, the 2020-20. Now, when you look at other things like Miracle Morning, it's not specific time, but it is specific activities. Here's why I don't like that prescription. First and foremost, I already touched on the fact that, you know, you may be in a season of life where you have little human beings, or maybe you're caring for elderly parents, right? And you don't have the luxury of an entire hour to yourself without getting up at a ridiculously early time. And sacrificing on sleep is never something I'm going to agree to. Now, here's another reason why. Personalities are different. Things that quiet someone's brain can look different from one person to another. I mean, just the other day, my sister and I were having a conversation. I was telling we were somehow we got on the conversation of escape rooms. My daughter and I love them. All right. Like that is a fun, relaxing thing for me to do. For one of my sisters, that's kind of like her definition of hell. Oh, timers and clues and stress, like, no, thank you. That would not be a fun afternoon, right? Now, who's right and who's wrong? Neither one of us. What's right for me is right for me, and what's wrong for me is wrong for me. Which means if someone is saying that you must start your day doing a specific activity, sweating first, right? That may not be the right thing for every single individual. Now, is moving your body every day important? Yes. But does it have to be at 5 a.m.? And does it have to be for an exact amount of time? Absolutely not. And so if any time someone is telling us, here are the exact activities you must do in this exact order, in order to, because at the heart of this, the reason why he's implementing the 5 a.m. club, again, remember, this is someone who is a coach, a leadership coach to executives, the underlying message is all of this is going to make you more successful and more productive. If that's the ultimate kind of unspoken goal here, is we're doing these things to make you more productive and more successful. If you are trying to do activities in your morning that you hate, that don't bring you joy, that don't set you up for success, that don't serve you, that is not going to translate to better productivity and higher success. I consider myself a highly productive person. I am also, you know, we've run built a very successful business here. The way I start my day does not follow any of the traditional kind of male productivity expert things, all right? Because that's what's not right for me. It doesn't fit my personality and it doesn't fit my home life. If you're hearing this 5 a.m. club, you're like, God, that sounds really nice. I get excited about thinking about a 2020-20 start to my day, then absolutely jump in, give it a go. And remember, it takes 66 days to form a habit. So tell yourself, I'm gonna try this out and I'm gonna see where it lands for me after a month, after two months, right? And the idea is after the 66 days, maybe it's not as hard to get up at 5 a.m. as it is originally. Now, if on the flip side you're sitting here thinking, that does I'm already running the math. I don't see how that's physically possible. The thought of doing some of those activities is a hard no. Like maybe you're someone who just loves that afternoon workout instead. Then I invite you to pass this one by. You don't need to implement the 5 a.m. club to be a highly successful, highly productive person. The real damage that comes from telling people how they should start their day to be successful is that a rigid someone else's routine could potentially break for you the first time you try and implement it if you already know this is going to be really hard with your life. And then when it keeps breaking, what happens is we end up blaming ourselves. I'm just not motivated enough. I'm just not disciplined enough. And so we get in this vicious guilt loop spiral instead of recognizing, oh, this is a routine that just does not match my current life. Right. And maybe you don't need a full hour because maybe your life doesn't support it. My morning routine right now is not an hour long. I've had seasons of life where it has been. Now, again, when we think about morning routines, here's what I want to invite you to understand. The real purpose of a morning routine shouldn't be measured by the output of your day. Meaning, let me find the right morning routine to make me the most productive human. No. The real purpose of a morning routine that I want to invite you to think about is giving you time to serve yourself before you become in service to others, especially for women, right? Especially if you have people you are caring for in your household. It is so easy to start our day immediately in service to others. And so at the heart of a morning routine is having a pocket of time, it may only be five or 10 minutes, where you are serving yourself first so that you are then more able and more refreshed and feeling a little bit more ready to be in service to others. Think of the old, you know, airplane thing, put on your mask before putting on your children's. Same concept here. So if the idea of figuring out how to create a morning routine that works for your real life and for your morning personality, right? Some people love morning, some people don't. Some people hit the ground running, some people think like putting on pants feels like a lot of work first thing in the morning, right? Then I would love to have you join me inside of Master Your Morning. Now, at the time this podcast is airing, I am going to be holding a free event and I am going to be teaching you this exact step-by-step process to create a morning routine based on your reality and your personality type. Uh, you can head over to Megansumerle.com forward slash morning. We've got the link for the show notes. Now, if you're listening to this podcast later, we often have those recordings available. So you could still head over to that same URL and learn how to create a morning routine based on your life and your personality. So, in closing, friends, if you've been beating yourself up, right? Because you've been trying to implement these morning experts and they just aren't landing for you, it's probably because it was built around a life that looks nothing like yours. All right, I'll see you back here next week. In the meantime, happy planning. Getting on top of all things, time management, organization, and productivity doesn't have to stop just because this episode is over. If you are feeling overwhelmed, your calendar's out of control, or you're just running in a race that will never end in terms of your to-do list, I have great news for you. I have an app in both the App Store and Google Play called the Pink Bee. And it is chock full of small but incredibly powerful trainings to help you get out of overwhelm. It includes my signature Ditch the Overwhelm training and introduction to my time management framework built specifically for women. So open up either your app store or Google Play, do a search on the word the Pink Bee, all one word, and download the app to get started today.