“What are you waiting for? Get up at 5 a.m. tomorrow and develop your full potential!” Like a prayer wheel, self-proclaimed mindset lions preach these sentences on social media. The Lion King: Author Robin Sharma. His book “The 5 am Club” is something like the Bible of the 5 am Club (am or am stands for ante meridiem, before noon). The promise: a self-optimized life. The formula: get up at 5 a.m. every day. What’s behind it and how healthy is the change?
What is the 5 at the club?
First five-to-six, then nine-to-five – that is the idea of the 5 am Club. That means: Before the working day begins, you start every morning at 5 a.m. with an hour of self-care. While your partner, children or neighbor are slumbering, you have already been working for an hour. No distractions. Strict me time, time for me. The idea: If there is no time for self-realization in your efficiency-oriented everyday life, you get an extra hour in the morning. The fans of the 5 am club rely on the so-called 20-20-20 method.
What does the 5 at the club mean by the 20-20-20 method?
The snooze function on the alarm clock does not exist in the world of the 5 am Club. Get up, put on your sports clothes and move around for twenty minutes. This is what Robin Sharma’s 20-20-20 method does. First move for twenty minutes, then twenty minutes of meditation or self-reflection and finally twenty minutes of further training. For example, reading, learning a language or knitting. According to Sharma, this strengthens the four inner areas of Mindset, Heartset, Soulset, Healthset – i.e. way of thinking, emotion, inner center and health.
What can I do to sleep better?
5 am Club: Is this healthy in the long term?
If you like to get up early and feel more productive in the morning, it’s easy to join the 5 am club. But that also means that you have to go to bed early to get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep. If you can’t make it to bed before 10 p.m. in the long run, you risk lack of sleep. And that doesn’t make you productive, it makes you unfocused.
This is exactly where the 5 o’clock concept reaches its limits. Those who have to take care of the house and children after work often cannot go to sleep by 9 p.m. Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow may be able to structure their daily routine more flexibly, but this has little to do with the everyday lives of most people.
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Getting up at 5 a.m. – not for owls
The 5 at the club is also a chronobiological type question: early riser or morning grouch? If you’re not a lark but a night owl, you shouldn’t force the 5 a.m. routine on yourself. Not everyone works in the morning like at the push of a button right after getting up.
When mindset gurus claim that decision-making ability or productivity is best in the morning, that doesn’t help a person who doesn’t like mornings. This simply does not correspond to the internal clock and destroys the biorhythm. The consequences: an increased risk of metabolic problems, depression and cardiovascular diseases. Added to this is the lack of natural daylight: If the sun doesn’t rise until after 8 a.m. in December, you’ll be sitting in the dark for three hours in the morning – that’s not a wake-up call.
What can you learn from 5 am Club?
The 20-20-20 method is inherently a good way to use an hour effectively. As long as you like it clocked. And basically it helps to structure your everyday life and, above all, to find a fixed sleep rhythm. Sleep researchers agree that regular bedtimes are crucial for performance and health. That doesn’t mean the day has to start at 5 a.m.
The idea of the 5 am club is very stiff and not suitable for every chrono type. In the end, it’s all about taking an hour a day for yourself in everyday life. Everyone should find out for themselves whether that is at 5 a.m., 1 p.m. or 10 p.m.
