Mornings
5AM Club
The 5AM Club is a morning routine from a book by the writer Robin Sharma. You get up at 5:00 AM and spend the first hour on yourself, in three parts of 20 minutes: you exercise, you think quietly, and you learn something. It needs an early bedtime, because 5:00 AM after a late night is a short night.
Last updated
Reviewed by Mohammed Raqeeb
The idea
What is the 5AM Club?
The 5AM Club is Robin Sharma’s name for getting up at and keeping the first hour of the day for yourself, before work, family and your phone. It is also the title of his book, which came out in 2018.
Sharma calls that hour the Victory Hour. He calls the way he splits it the 20/20/20 Formula: move, reflect and grow (his own site).
| Time | The part, and what you do |
|---|---|
| MoveExercise hard enough to sweat. | |
| ReflectSit quietly: pray, meditate, or write in a notebook. | |
| GrowLearn something: read, or listen to a podcast. | |
| Your day starts |
The three names are Sharma’s. The lines under them are our summary of what he told a news reporter and the podcast host Lewis Howes.
Before you start
Should you wake up at 5 AM?
Waking up at takes an early bedtime. Getting up earlier does not add an hour to your day. It moves an hour from your evening to your morning.
Count back from 5:00 AM first.
Adults need at least 7 hours of sleep a night, say the CDC, a US health agency, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a group of sleep doctors. Seven hours before is . That is the time to be asleep, not the time to start getting ready for bed. If you need eight hours, it is .
With a late bedtime, 5:00 AM is a short night.
Say you fall asleep at and the alarm rings at . That is 5h 30m of sleep, which is 1h 30m less than the least an adult needs. So the bedtime comes first, and the alarm second.
The first hour is when you feel least awake.
People often feel groggy right after they wake up. Researchers who went through the studies on this found that the feeling is strongest in the first 30 minutes, and that it can take an hour or more to go away completely. It can be worse after a short night, and when the alarm rings at an hour your body still counts as night (Hilditch and McHill, 2019). So after a late night, the first hour of the day may also be the hour you feel worst.
Late sleepers can move earlier, but slowly.
In one small study, young adults who slept very late moved their sleep about two hours earlier in three weeks. After that they woke up at 8:36 AM on average, which is still a long way from 5:00 AM (Facer-Childs and colleagues, 2019). We found no study that tested the 5AM Club itself.
Try it
Your bedtime for a 5 AM alarm
The planner below counts back from . Enter the time you fall asleep now and the sleep you need.
From 7 to 10 hours. Under 7 is less than an adult needs.
The alarm stays at .
Lights out at
8h of sleep before a alarm.
With your bedtime now, a alarm leaves you 6h of sleep. That is 2h less than you need. Move your bedtime first: 15 minutes earlier a day takes 8 days.
- Last coffee: caffeine can keep working for up to 8 hours
- Lights out
- Move
- Reflect
- Grow
- Your day starts
Lights out at , alarm at .
A plan for your evening, not a record of your sleep. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
How to do it
How to try the 5AM Club for two weeks
You can try the 5AM Club for two weeks by moving your bedtime and your alarm together, a little each day, and then keeping for the rest of the two weeks.
Ana is a made-up example. She falls asleep at and gets up at , so she sleeps eight hours. Her alarm has to move two hours earlier, which is 8 steps of 15 minutes.
| Day | Lights out | Alarm |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | ||
| Day 4 | ||
| Day 8 | ||
| Days 9 to 14 |
Move both times 15 minutes a day.
Turn the lights out 15 minutes earlier tonight, and set tomorrow’s alarm 15 minutes earlier too. That way you keep your hours of sleep. The page on how to wake up early has a planner that gives you every date.
Make the three parts small.
A walk, a page in a notebook and ten pages of a book are enough. Put your shoes, the notebook and the book out the night before.
After two weeks, decide.
Sharma told the podcast host Lewis Howes that people who like late nights should try the routine for three or four weeks and then judge by the results. Two weeks already answer the main question: were you asleep by your new bedtime on most nights? If not, pick a later hour. The same three parts fit after a alarm.
If you often have problems sleeping, talk to a doctor. The CDC and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine both say so. Nothing on this page is medical advice.
The test
How do you know the 5AM Club is working?
The test
You were asleep by your bedtime and up at on at least 6 days of the week
for two weeks in a row, once your alarm is at .
The mornings you got up at five are easy to remember. The nights you went to bed too late for it are easy to forget.
A good way to check is to count your nights and your mornings from what you write or say about your day. Most journaling apps only ask how your day felt. They do not show what time you fell asleep or got up.
One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.
You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: sleep, your first hour, your evening, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. So you can see what time you really got up each day, and how many hours you slept the night before. Add getting up at five as a daily habit. When what you write about your morning shows you were up on time, the app ticks it off and your streak goes on.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.
Sources
Where this page comes from.
What the 5AM Club is comes from Robin Sharma’s own site and two interviews with him. We read every source below for this page, the full text or its summary. For the book we read a library record, not the book itself.
- Sharma, R. (2018). The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life. HarperCollins Publishers.
- robinsharma.com (read ). Books.
- The news agency IANS (2019). One hour a day can change your life: Robin Sharma. IANS, published by Madhyamam.
- Lewis Howes (2020). The Morning Routine of Millionaires, Superstars, and History’s Greatest Geniuses with Robin Sharma. The School of Greatness, episode 988.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (read ). About Sleep.
- American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Sleep Education (read ). Healthy Sleep Habits.
- Hilditch, C. J. and McHill, A. W. (2019). Sleep inertia: current insights. Nature and Science of Sleep, 11, 155 to 165.
- Facer-Childs, E. R., Middleton, B., Skene, D. J. and Bagshaw, A. P. (2019). Resetting the late timing of ‘night owls’ has a positive impact on mental health and performance. Sleep Medicine, 60, 236 to 247.
Keep reading.
- LearnAnswers about sleep, habits, study, people and work, in hours.
- Morning routineTwo routines to copy, short and long, and a builder that puts a clock time on each step from your own alarm.
- How to wake up earlyMove your alarm earlier a little at a time, and your bedtime with it. An example week, and a plan with your own dates.
- Night routineA routine to copy, with a clock time on every step, and a builder that makes one for your own bedtime.
- Where did my week go? calculatorEnter a typical day and see your week accounted and unaccounted.
- Time journalingThe method: write or say your day in your own words, then see it as hours.
Questions
Questions people ask.
What is the 5AM Club?
The 5AM Club is a morning routine from Robin Sharma’s book of the same name. You get up at 5:00 AM and spend the first hour in three parts of 20 minutes: exercise, quiet thinking, and learning.
What is the 20/20/20 rule of the 5AM Club?
The 20/20/20 Formula is how Robin Sharma splits the first hour. You exercise from 5:00 AM, sit and think or write from 5:20 AM, and read or learn from 5:40 AM. At 6:00 AM your day starts.
What time should I go to bed to wake up at 5 AM?
Be asleep by 10:00 PM at the latest, and by 9:00 PM if you need eight hours. Adults need at least 7 hours of sleep a night, so count back from 5:00 AM.
How do I keep track of my 5 AM mornings?
A note by your bed works: write down when you fell asleep and when you got up, every day. If you want an app, look for one that shows both times. One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in. Think in Numbers reads what you write or say about your day, shows what time you got up each morning, and adds up your hours of sleep each week. Getting up at five can also be a daily habit, ticked off from what you write about your day.
Try it on my day.
Write today down in your own words, and see where the hours went.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.