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

The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life by Robin Sharma
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My rating: 3of 5 stars

My thoughts on Robin Sharma before I review the 5 AM CLUB:

I am not a Robin Sharma fan. But I have watched all of his videos online. Especially the Mastery sessions are very inspiring and informational. One of my favorite Mastery sessions' videos is 9 Rules for a Monumental Life. In certain areas of my life, Robin Sharma has really helped me gain clarity to a certain extent. But I like Robin Sharma more as a speaker than as a writer. I look up to him but am not a self-proclaimed fan of Robin Sharma (Just to reiterate!). But yes, he certainly deserves to be one of the most highly paid speakers in the world. He is both charismatic and makes his point in such a way that it has a lasting impact on the listener.

Now coming to his books, I have read almost all of his books such as The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, The Greatness Guide, Who Will Cry When You Die, The Leader Without Title, The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari among many others. I am talking about my college days though when I was still maturing as a reader. These books in a way really helped me to read more. And when you are a budding reader, whichever book makes you read even more is a good book(This is just my opinion!). Self-help genre is a good starting point for the budding readers, but the point is that you should not get stuck with it.

 Review of the 5 am club

I picked up his recent book the 5 am Club after lots of hesitation because I heard mixed reviews on various online platforms such as Good reads and the book clubs that I go to. But that I didn’t deter me from reading the book The 5 AM Club. And I also have a personal reason for this. I am not a morning person and I hate getting up at 5 am.  Before this, I have read the book The Miracle Morning famous for its morning routine model SAVERS(Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, Scribing). It had a negligible effect on me. It didn’t change me much as a person though. This book the 5 AM Club , I find is old wine in a new bottle.

The main thesis of this book can be summed up as: Rise up early in the morning at 5 am and   this practice will elevate your life. The most important concept of this book, in my opinion, is the 20\20\20 rule. The first 20 minutes when you wake up at 5 am, the first 20 minutes should be for vigorous exercise, the second 20 minutes for spiritual activities such as prayer, meditation or journaling and the last 20 minutes for learning and growing. Waking up at 5 o clock in the morning should not come at the cost of sleep deprivation though. He equally vouches for sleep hygiene to perform in our daily lives at our optimal level.

This book has only 4 characters-the Spellbinder, the elderly motivational speaker; the woman entrepreneur, the artist and the eccentric entrepreneur Mr. Railey. Both the woman entrepreneur and the artist are guided by the billionaire entrepreneur on tactics to live a world-class life and how to elevate the humanity at the same time by waking up at  5  am and doing certain things as advised by Mr. Railey. But the problem is that the story comes across as very dry devoid of an interesting plot.Also there were too many cliches coming out from  Spellbinder and Riley.  And, I feel that the story could have been made much more interesting for the readers. But yes, those readers who are seeking self-help wisdom will definitely find some useful nuggets and useful models.

I liked this book for its unique vocabulary and fancy terms such as an imaginationist, possibilitarian, age of dramatic distractions, dream-stealers, Tight Bubble of Total Focus(TBTF), history makers and empire builders  etc to name a few. These words are some of the brain tattoos which shall ever be ingrained in my mind forever. On top of that, what I liked about this book is that it's stressing on living a life true to your values and not getting lured  into the pursuit of shiny toys. You can be both a warrior and a poet at the same time.

My contention with the book is that what is so magical about the time 5 am. The tactics which the author advises the readers to follow, for instance, reading and learning can be done at any point of time during the day. It need not be necessarily at 5 o clock in the morning. I am sure the morning persons will disagree to my point. But, I still want to stick to my guns.

So my final verdict: pick up this book for the paraphernalia of tactics, if you implement, can prove to be total a game changer for your life.. But that doesn’t mean it is a great read. Most of the book’s content could be summarized in 50 pages or less. I would have loved it more if the author had penned down non-fiction on the same subject by being a bit more technical and giving case studies to prove the point. Though this book has that essence to some extent, it was bland and boring. Not a great read, but an ‘OK’ read for me.

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