Practice your morning routine during the day to make getting up early easier.

MORNING ROUTINE.

Search this up here on medium. Hundreds of articles.

Everyone’s definitive path to change, purpose and success. And they do make sense. Just go through a few of them and you’ll see they are all freakin awesome.

5AM here I come.

Right?

Well, if it were that easy in the first place, everyone would do it and there would be no fun. Exciting thing about 5AM is everyone ought to be asleep and you can’t be bothered.

You have this quiet time for exercise and creative endeavors without any interruptions. Totally under your control. You get it done and then the messy life can take charge. Yet you go on smiling, you did your part, you’re set.

Wake at 5, get out of the house and jog 30 minutes, get back, work on my side-project. Easy as pie. With consistency I’ll get confidence, momentum.. sky is the limit.

5 years from now success is a sure thing.

But this is not about how awesome 5AM club is, yet about how frickin hard it is and how you can use this excellent unsolicited piece of advice to make it easy.

5AM IS HARD.

It sounds great on paper, yet on practice, you’ll find there is resistance and maybe serious urges to keep sleeping. “Oh.. what.. is this?! Damn! It’s morning already?!.. feel so so tired.. I need more…sleep.. need more..”

And I know what everyone says. Just find your purpose, boost your motivation and you will be well on your way.

Yet this might work for the more “mentally fit” of us, unfortunately for myself… well, I’m more of this easy-going type to be honest.

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
- Groucho Marx

This is my kind of person. Will get there, will take time, yet I trust this future-self to handle all the hard parts. First thing tomorrow.. he’ll be 100% taking massive action. He will not disappoint.

Irrationally optimistic and relying on an imaginary sheer force of will, which if experience tells.. never really showed up for me when actually needed.

You see, I have this problem here. 5AM is hard and I can’t really trust myself just on motivation and strong will. And so I had to devise this amazing and utterly mind-blowing plan…

There is scientific evidence, that if you repeat something long enough it will become automatic at some point (eg: driving). And this is the actual cornerstone to all habit forming theories. You just go through your routine .. again and again until it’s second nature.

So I came up with this idea that all I would have to do is automate my 5AM morning routine and remove that flimsy self from the equation.

THE FOOL PROOF PLAN: SWITCHING TO AUTOPILOT!

That’s it! No active thinking, no more resistance, just going with the motions.

Wake up, brush teeth, drink water, running clothes, out the door, jog, get back, shower, work-clothes, computer, work.

(Wait 5 years and enjoy success!)

I can hear you.
Wait .. what!? This is so confusing?! Isn’t the whole point to wake up in the first place each morning at 5AM? Do your routine.. every single day.. and then it becomes automatic?! How can we automate waking up at 5AM without actually starting to wake up at 5AM? This makes no sense!

Exactly! You brilliantly pin-pointed the solution! We do exactly that! We automate waking up before starting to wake up at 5AM. Yet we don’t really need to automate it at precisely 5AM…

DO WHAT THE ARMY DOES!

They don’t send you to some war-zone to start your training under enemy fire. No No.. They do it somewhere safe and quiet.

And then they drill all those procedures into you again and again, so when a situation arises in the actual war zone, your response is already automatic.

5AM is war zone! You need a more friendly-time to train.

Saturday and Sunday noon.

We do what the army does, we create drills for ourselves. We first train on our routine and only then go and apply it at 5AM or 4:30AM or whatever war time hour you prefer.

Saturday and Sunday noon, plenty of time to kill, do your drills. Get in bed, set the alarm for 5 minutes later, simulate you are asleep and when the alarm rings.. boom you start your morning routine.

And you only need to focus on the hard parts. The ones with high resistance, like the wake-up itself, the exercise, the work. Everything else is pretty automatic anyways.

The alarm rings, you get out of bed.. Again! Alarm rings, you get out of bed.. Again! The alarm rings, you get out of bed..

And so on.

Simulate as closely to what your morning situation would be. Pick up your stuff and leave quietly without waking your spouse.. or jump out of bed and scream Goood Morning Vieeetnam!

You got the gist! It’s easy! Do what the army does and train for a specific situation in a controlled environment, before jumping into the real stuff.

Focus on the details! Smooth out everything! Where you keep your slippers, your phone, where you prepare your exercise clothes, your work clothes and so on.

The more you train the easier it will become.

DRILL YOUR MORNING ROUTINE AT A FRIENDLY TIME!

So you want to become part of the 5AM club? Get yourself in shape before actually facing those 5 hours of sleep per night.

Join your own personal morning army and drill yourself on all the hard parts! They say the first month is the hardest, you can simulate that over one weekend. Just build your 1h routine and repeat it from dawn to dusk.

It’s a lot easier than starting head first on Monday, trust me.

AND ALSO REMEMBER THE EVENING ROUTINE!

And hey, keep in mind you’ll need that evening routine drilled also. The 5AM is the glamorous part, easy to keep yourself motivated, but there is this 9PM thing nobody talks about.

If you want to be energized and optimal starting the day at 5AM, you’d better be asleep by 9:30PM. That’s the best time if you wish to wake up on the happy side of that sleep cycle.

You can check with http://sleepyti.me and figure out your best evening-morning hours combination.

The evening routine is what makes or breaks the morning one, so don’t skimp on it. Set up 30 minutes for it and then drill it, same as the morning one.

Alarm rings, engage preparations for bed time. Alarm rings.. you get it.

And keep an eye on your mindset. Build it, train it and keep it strong. Your motivation is really important, first thing out of bed should always be excitement!

Let me know how it goes for you in the comments below.

The alarm rings! Yes! Time for action! Get out of bed.. Again! Alarm rings! Yes! Time for action! Get out of bed.. Again! The alarm rings! Shiiit! What?! No.. uhm… yay?! oh well.. Again!

Alarm rings! What a wonderful time to be alive! Time for action! Get out of bed..

Again…

See you in 5 years ;)