The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life

 Author: Robin Sharma

Genre: NonFiction, SelfHelp, Productivity, Personal Development

Rating: 2/5

Verdict: Extremely long-winded and stretched to convey a single message. It was a chore to read, I couldn't wait to finish reading the book.

I have read Robin Sharma's "Who will cry when you die?" and loved it, so I picked up this book from him for my next read. Also, I am a morning person and love waking up really early having some time for myself before the daily rut starts. I wake up at 5:30 am even on weekends so I can get some quiet reading time in before the rest of my family is up and about. I love the stillness and peace of the morning before sunrise and watching the first rays streaming in through my window. So, I knew this book would be preaching to the choir but I was very curious to find out the author's perspective on this topic.

There is one simple message and that is what the title states exactly. The author tries to convey this through a 225 page book and it was excruciatingly painful to read through the same repetitive message in different forms and chapters. The storyline is completely irrelevant and made me so frustrated and impatient throughout the book. It took the author 5 chapters to even get to the concept of waking up at 5 am, too long winded and stretched. At some point, I was so tired of waiting for the actual content that I started to skim over chapters to get to the meaningful parts of the book. 

The only reason I have given it a 2/5 is because of the quotes/messages about discipline, will power and habits. All of these could have been easily packed into well within 80-100 pages and it would've made for a very crisp read. Some of the messages I really liked and resonated with me:

* All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.

* World-class willpower isn’t an inborn strength, but a skill developed through relentless practice.

* Personal discipline is a muscle. The more you stretch it, the stronger it grows. Therefore, the samurais of self-regulation actively create conditions of hardship to build their natural power.

* Continue at all costs. Persistency sits at the threshold of mastery.

The 5 AM club preaches jumping out of one's bed at 5 am and splitting the first hour of your day into a 20/20/20 model where you perform sweat inducing physical activity for the first 20 mins followed by 20 mins of reflecting through meditation, praying, journaling followed by 20 mins of growing - reading, studying and the likes. Sure, I'd love to do this if I didn't have to get things ready for my kids for school, pack lunches, prepare breakfast and so on in the early hours of the morning which is the luxury billionaires and CEO's can afford with additional help and sure enough they can follow the 20/20/20 rule to start the day on fire. There is no one size fits all for this model!