Hey guys, so what I wanted to talk a little bit about is the 4:30 a.m. club. Basically, the concept of waking up really super early is something you can train for. First of all you have to really determine, if you have a valid reason to wake up at 4:30 in the morning? I would say for most portion of my life, I think between high school and college, I did not feel like I really had a good reason unless it was like studying for an exam and there were days that I would go to bed at midnight and wake up at 3:30 thinking I was going to learn about four chapters worth of information in a short period of time.
I will share with you some thoughts, at a separate blog post, on how to consume lots of information in a very short period amount of time when you are constrained, whether it’s a textbook, whether it’s a chapter, whether it’s even just a one pager and how to memorize things in speed. But, the long story short waking up at 4:30 in the morning once you have your Y, which is a separate blog post that I did recently, it’s important to know what are some steps that you can take to wake up at 4:30 in the morning. First rule is, you’ve got to get to bed early. Some people struggle with getting to bed early. I always try and stay away from carbs and sugar close to bedtime. Eat your dinner kind of usually between six and seven.
Don’t eat after seven. Start to have a bedtime ritual where you actually have comfortable clothes and your room is super cool. You can use the chili pad which is like this $600 device you can put on one side of the bed. It’s like water mat that cools it, does not wet it or anything like that, but cools the mattress down. Make sure there’s no lights in the room. Stop checking e-mail after a certain point I think this was just something I struggled with a little bit so after 7:45pm I stopped checking emails. Really find out what type of fiction or reading material you love. I love comic books and fiction always puts me to sleep. You can also just read as well. I love listening things and somehow when I start to listen to like comic books or stories about comics I start to doze off a little bit after like eight minutes.
Once I found out that it works, no matter how geeky that sounds, you go with it. Couple of other things, set your alarm for 4:30 and make sure you don’t hit snooze more than once or set it for like four twenty five and then it’s a short little snooze and you’re waking up at 4:30. Make sure that the night before everything is set up. I make sure I drink my shake and that it’s full of anti-oxidants nutrients. Put it in the fridge and if you have a Keurig or a coffee maker, reset up everything. I’ll share some of the supplements that I eat, like B-12 for example, put all of that in a little pill container. Put that by your shake and put that by your coffee. Once you are away. You probably want to start working right away. I have a stand up desk. I always just check all my stuff in the morning. Before I really check everything, I try and get my one or two tasks out of the way.
If you have workers or employees that have already started working in their time zone you need to be checking in with them first thing in the morning. I think it is really key. But, these are some tips to how to get up at 4:30 in the morning and how to make it a no brainer. You probably also want to lay your clothes out the night before. Every little thing, even maybe setting up the toothpaste and deodorant you’re going to use.
Once you’re up, you have a whole day ahead of you to plan your day. There is so much time there that you can use to plan your day, communicate with team members, get your meetings out of the way, so you can spend the rest of your day, which is kind of like what I’m doing right now, either having one on ones with clients, one on ones with team members, one on ones with partners, and just walking and talking and getting out in the sun and just building relationships which is really what your day should be about. If you’ve gotten to the point if your business where you have other people saying if you have other people supporting a client or other people building the products, as a CEO, that’s your one responsibility.
Anyway, once you find your rhythm, waking up at 4:30 in morning is a lot easier. All right. Thanks so much guys.
