Robin Sharma - 5 AM Club | Share the Wealth Series

The "Share the Wealth" series by Madis Birk is published on every Tuesday. This summary of the series is on Robin Sharma's book "5 AM Club".

Key take-home messages from the book: 

• “Own your morning, elevate your life”.  
• “No idea works until you do the work”. 
• Framework: Better self-awareness > better choices > better outcomes.  
• Guarding your “Victory Hour” no matter what.  
• “As we betray our true power, a part of us starts to die.” 
• “Part-time commitment, brings part-time results.” 
• “Memento homo” - in Latin for “Remember you are only a man.” 
• “Day by day. Step by step, an epic existence gets handcrafted.” 
• T-shirt quote: “Yes, I’m in a relationship – with myself”. 

Best nuggets chapter by chapter  

A Daily Philosophy of Becoming Legendary (Chapter 2) 

• “Ideas are worth nothing unless backed by application. The smallest of implementation is always worth more than the grandest intention.”  
• “Done is better than perfect”  

Letting Go of Mediocrity and All That's Ordinary (Chapter 4) 

• Personal standards - “Life’s way too valuable to hang with people who don’t get you. Who you just don’t vibe with. Who have different values and lower standards than you do.”  
• Avoid putting people on a pedestal - “Remember, every professional was once an amateur, and every master started as a beginner. Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary feats, once they’ve routinized the right habits.”  
• The good old saying from F1 driver - “If everything seems under control you’re not going fast enough”.  
• Rethink how you relate to failure - “Failure’s just growth in wolf’s clothing”.  
• Tolstoy quote the used - “Everyone thinks of changing the world but no one thinks of changing himself”. 
• Funny phrase I’ll adopt - “Drama mamas” 

A Bizarre Adventure into Morning Mastery (Chapter 5)  

• Morning visualization approach: “I envision my ideal performance for the day ahead. I also reach deep into my emotions so I feel what it feels like when I achieve the wins I’ve planned to accomplish. I lock myself into an extremely confident state where any form of failure isn’t within the realm of possibility. Then I go out and do my finest to live out that perfect day.”  

A Flight to Peak Productivity, Virtuosity and Undefeatability (Chapter 6) 

• Setting new standards for yourself, by yourself: “Everything you now find easy you first found difficult. With consistent practice, getting up with the sun will become your new normal. And automatic.”  

Preparation for a Transformation Begins in Paradise (Chapter 7) 

• Think big - “A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.”  
• You got to rest too - “Elite production without a quiet vacation causes a lasting depletion. Rest and recovery aren’t a luxury for anyone committed to mastery – it's a necessity.  

The 5am Method: The Morning Routine of World-Builders (Chapter 8) 

• Allowing yourself buffer time each morning – so you never rush in the morning. To quote: “No more rushing in the morning. Imagine what that alone does for the quality of your day. Starting your day luxuriating in the quietude only the early morning provides. Beginning your day feeling strong centred and free”.  

A Framework for the Expression of Greatness (Chapter 9) 

• I really love this example. Point blank makes the point and is so true – “The majority of people on the planet today are trapped in superficiality. The majority is stuck in vague, imprecise thinking. And vague, imprecise thinking yields vague, imprecise results. A quick example: ask the average person for directions and most of the time you’ll discover, their instructions are unclear. That’s because of the way they think is unclear.  

The 4 Focuses of History-Makers (Chapter 10) 

• “Dedication and discipline beats brilliance and giftedness every day of the week. And A-Players don’t get lucky. They make lucky.” 
• The importance of the story to tell yourself - “Human beings are hardwired to act in alignment with our self-identity. You’ll never rise higher than your personal story. Important insight here.” 
• As we betray our true power, we feel pain. And we avoid that pain at all cost - “We subconsciously develop a series of soul-crushing escape routes to avoid feeling this pain generated by our talents denied.”  
• Get clear, get focused. Be realistic. Live a reality-based reality - “Concentrate on just a few work projects so you make them amazing versus diluting your attention on too many.”  
• MB: realization. Time blocks for time management are just a guiding principle they are there to help you, but in the end, you make the calls what you do in the moment - “Stop managing your time and start managing your focus” 
• Simplify-simplify-simplify - “Intense concentration only on what matters most is how pros relize victory”.  
• Consistency, boy - “Elite producers and everyday hero's understand that what you do each day matters far more than what you do once in a while.”  

The 5 am Club Discovers The Habit Installation Protocol (Chapter 12) 

• Accept that you’ll always and forever face some degree of opposition to what you do. That’s the nature of life - “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”  
• “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”  
• Don’t allow yourself to get exhausted. Period. “The key is rest and recovery of the self-control muscle. Never allow it to get too tired. We make our worst decisions and our lowest choices when we’re exhausted. So, don’t allow yourself to get exhausted. Period” 
• Minimize your choice in the morning - “Each morning your will power is limited. Automate as many basic things as possible, so you can concentrate your highest powers on just a few important activates.”  
• A very important life principle that I try to live by, elegantly explained by Mother Teresa - “If everyone would only clean their own doorstep, the whole world would be clean.”  

The 5 am Club Learns the 20/20/20 Formula (Chapter 13) 

• Why you should do a morning workout - “Exercising in the morning will significantly lower your level of cortisol. Why that matters? It’s because cortisol is the hormone of fear. Cortisol is one of the main materials that stunts your genius and devastates your implicit opportunity to make history. Doing a morning workout, lowering your cortisol dials you into your top performance.”  
• Don't get locked into only using your diary for positive habits. Like gratitude or 3Q. Use it to process through anything that's top of mind - “Use your journal as a place to process through any frustrations, disappointments and resentments in your heart so you let them go. It’s miraculous how you’ll release toxic emotions and low energy from your system”. + “Put a written voice to the dark energy of life’s burdens to dissolve them”.  
• “Living in the past steals so much energy from most people, you know?”  

The 5 am Club Grasps the Essentialness of Sleep (Chapter 14) 

• “You need minimum 7,5h sleep, each night”. 
• Taking responsibility - “As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward him. We need not wait to see what others do.” 
• The importance of micro level, from morning routine, the “Victory Hour” to your whole life - “Amazing days create an upward spiral into amazing weeks and amazing weeks morph into amazing months. And amazing moths become amazing quarters and amazing quarters yield amazing years, and decades and ultimately an amazing lifetime.”  

The 5 am Club Is Mentored on The 10 Tactics of Lifelong Genius (Chapter 15) 

• “Everyone dreams of being a legend until it comes time to do the work that legends do.” 
• Importance of focus when doing your craft - “I don’t diffuse my genius on being pretty good at many things when I have it in me to be legendary by working intensely on one thing.”  
• Love the framing of work to “Showtime” - “When you show up for work, it’s not the time to shop online, to gossip or to check messages. It’s showtime. For the super producers.”  
• The 90/90/1 challenge – For ninety days schedule yourself to invest the first ninety minutes of your workday on the one activity that, when completed at world-class, will cause you to own your field. 
• The 60/10 method – Operate more like a sprinter than a marathoner. How it works: “Structure your work in cycles so that you alternate bursts of deep focus and ferocious intensity of performance with periods of real rest and full recovery.”  
• The goal is to perform activities that: “Shift brains attention from ruminating and worrying behaviours of the left hemisphere into the creativity and flow of the right section” 
• The activities include, but are not limited to:  

1. Quick walk 
2. Visualizing 
3. Meditating  
4. Listening to music you love 
5. Chatting/socializing with others.  

• Power of reflecting – do it weekly, daily, more the better: “By deliberately reflecting on the areas where you are moving ahead, you’ll insulate your ambition, guard your confidence and defeat the dangerous trickster of fear, so you get amazing feats done.”  
• The 2 Massage Protocol (2MP) - “The benefits of massage include a 31% reduction of cortisol levels, 31% increase in dopamine, a 28% elevation of serotonin, sending anti-inflammation messages to muscle cells – consequently those cells make more mitochondria.”  

“Have a deep-tissue massage versus simple relaxation bodywork. It needs to hurt a little for it to work well.”  

“Given the marvellous benefits of massage, the truth is you can’t afford not to install this habit. Yes, two ninety-minute massages a week will cost a lot of money. Death will cost you more.”  

• The Weekly Design System (WDS) - “Designing a week without a granulated game plan for the seven days ahead of you is like attempting to summit Mont Blanc without a climbing strategy or hiking into deep woods without a compass.  

“Start the process by writing about the highlights from the seven days you just lived.” 

“Then record your lessons learned and optimization for coming week even better.” 

MB: Think about any 1% tweaks you could apply.  

The 5 am Club Embraces The Twin Cycles of Elite Performance (Chapter 16) 

• “Becoming legendary in your industry is all about sustainability. And making sure you show up at world-class not just for a month or even for an entire year”. 
• Learning this “deep work – deep rest” cycle is a skill of its own - “You really must learn how to balance working intensely and brilliantly with deep rest and recovery so you can remain fresh and strong over a long career.” 

Point is. Pro athlete: “I rest to allow all my training to take effect”.  

By doing proper recovery you will: “I work less, have more fun and yet I get more done”.  

• “Time you least feel like doing something is the best time to do it.”  
• “Dream big. Start small. Begin now”.  
• “Become a collector of awesome experiences instead of a consumer of material things.”  
• Express yourself fully at all times: “Tell people how proud you are of them and how much you love them while you – and they – are still alive.”  

“Not one of us knows when we’ll face our end. So, why hold back which is most valuable: your human capacity to love deeply?”.  

“Tomorrow is a promise, not a fact. Enjoy every morning and appreciate each day you have on Earth.”  

• “Look in the mirror. Your relationship with you predicts your relationship with the world.”
• “Ultimately, you’re the only person you’ll be with your entire life. Why not strengthen your relationship with your greatest self.”  
• Follow your joy - “To know ever-increasing amounts of happiness, trust what makes you feel happy. Your heart knows where you need to be. It’s so much wiser than your head. Instinct knows so much more than intellect and intuition is smarter than reason, that’s for sure. Our intelligence is made up of what those around us have taught us. It’s limited. It’s confined by logic – and what’s been done before.” 

“Only be around those people who fuel your joy. Only perform those pursuits that feed your bliss. Only be in those places that make you feel most alive.”  

“Please remember that gifts and talents neglected become curses and sorrows”.  

• “Trust - always – that life has your back – even if what’s unfolding makes no sense”.  
• The time is now - “Don’t put off expressing your gifts and talents. And make certain you enjoy this ride. Have a good time as you rise toward your magnificence.”  

Thank you for reading.

Madis