Takeaways from “The 5 AM Revolution”

Picked up this book in Kindle format. It’s authored by Dan Luca and the author himself said that it’s inspired from the book and concept of “The 5 AM club” which is started by Robin Sharma.

One of the points mentioned is that it makes it easier if we do not have a choice. For some of the important decisions, it might help if we maintain the discipline and make it mandatory to follow.

Aspects of the room for getting best sleep

1. The recommendation is to keep TV’s and computers out of the room. However, since that is not really possible for me. Maybe, I can make it a practice to not bring my laptop onto the bed. I should keep it a practice to just use the table for using my laptop and never bring it on to bed. That way, I know that there is a place to work and there is another place to sleep. Best not to mix both.
2. Darker the bed room, easier it is to fall asleep. The scientific reason for the same is that lack of light leads to increased production of melatonin which helps in the onset of sleep.
3. Noise free sleep is important so that the next day doesn’t feel lethargic. The sounds during our sleep have proven to be causing elevation of stress hormones like cortisol, and adrenaline.
4. Try to maintain optimal temperature in the bedroom.

Morning activities for a sound sleep

1. 30 mins of sun light. Best time is between 6–8:30.
2. Drink lots of water
3. Exercise for 30 minutes at least
4. A power nap in the afternoon for < 30 minutes and before 3 PM. Prefer couch or a rocking chair to a bed so that there is less temptation to sleep for more time.
5. Before the power nap, having a cup of coffee is good because it will act exactly after 20 minutes and that will be enough to wake us up at the right time
6. Post power nap, have water and do light exercise

Dinner

1. Good to eat tryptophan rich food since this element is the one useful in production of serotonin and melatonin, both of which are sleep inducing.
2. Avoid protein rich food since they stimulate the brain
3. Raw almonds, bananas, and oat meal are rich in tryptophan
4. Kiwis and papayas are also good before bed

To avoid

1. No caffeine after 3 PM
2. No screen time after 8 PM
3. Using bed only for sleep and not for other activities like work and else. If we do use it for other activities, we tend to do the same and our mind will not be in a state to sleep.

Evening routine

1. An alarm 30 minutes before going to bed. Do something like turning on the bed lamp in the bed room so that we start making progress towards this activity.
2. The 30 minute routine
3. Review of the day
4. Clothes for tomorrow
5. Brush teeth
6. Meditation

Techniques to fall asleep

1. Self relaxation — whatever we have already learnt. It’s basically about lying down with eyes closed and relaxing each body part and making ourselves conducive for sleep.
2. Paradoxical intent — sometimes, the intent to fall asleep inhibits sleep itself and hence it is recommended that you do the opposite by not trying to fall asleep. Instead, you try to stay awake so that this inhibition is broken and then you will be able to fall asleep automatically.
3. Relax — listen to relaxing music and turn off the TV.
4. Write down your fears — if we aren’t able to sleep, it might be because of the tension that something is causing. We can instead write down what is the fear which is causing us to lose our sleep. Writing it down and accepting it will make it better.

Morning routine

1. Gratitude — do it while brushing. Easy to link a new habit to an existing habit. Write them down.
2. Hot water with lemon and turmeric (is it really effective?)
3. Meditation
4. Exercise
5. Journaling — you can take one question (from the set provided in the book or we can form a set of questions by our self. The criteria for these questions is that it should make us think about our future.) and answer it per day. Also, answer the same question every month on the same day and over a period of time, we can see how our perceptions have changed.
6. List of must do things for the day such that completing them will give us the satisfaction and a chance to take a stop for the day.
7. Checking status and refining on our list of 12 month goals. It’s important to have these goals written in 1st person and with time constraints.

Find a reason to get up — it can be as simple as finding some quite time for yourself but you need to believe that reason and only then will you be able to consistently get motivated by it.

Advisable to have someone else to do this with so that we will have a consistency with this activity.

Handle the case where we miss waking up early — forgive and get back up and running quickly. Understand that there will be an inertia at the start and as we pick up steam with the habit, the inertia will go down.

The 8-week system

1. Start with going to bed 10 mins early and waking up 10 minutes early.
2. Repeat this exercise with advancing sleep cycle by 10 minutes every week.
3. 10–5 is the optimum as per the book.
4. The book advocates increasing the morning routine slowly with introducing each activity one at a time.