Day 5.
We’re beginning to form the very early signs of habit building.
Glad you’re with me on this journey. If you’re not – get ‘yo ass back to Day 1 lol!
But check it:
My 430am club on Whatsapp
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or you just don’t know who the f*ck I am – I accept the latter is more likely) – than you’ll know that I wake up at 430am
I managed to dig up the first mention of it on Whatsapp that involved my former business partner but still good friend Scott Henderson who runs 1MoreRep:
That makes it five months of waking up at 430am pretty much.
Well past the stage of habit-forming – it now stands as a routine in my life.
The Whatsapp group I founded is 35-strong.
In truth, I’m the only person in that group (and whom I actually know) that wakes up consistently at 430 – but many in the group do very early and are still pushing!
Let’s keep going guys!
I’m up at 430am 4-5x a week on average I’d say.
There used to be a whole routine to it:
I mean check it out.
I’ve still managed to record 109 videos dedicated to the 430am club!
We’d have to wake up, post a video of us having a cold shower, then doing exercise, before preparing a cup of tea and starting our day with some reading/education of some kind.
It became a game that several of us totally bought into.
A game that set us apart, made us stand out – made us extraordinary humans.
It also came with migraines, cluster headaches, naps during the day, feeling tired and irritable and adjusting my lifestyle.
Strawberry was resistant to it at first – which is totally normal.
It meant getting to bed at 930-1030pm. It meant ultimately changing our life.
And who’s a fan of changing your life for headaches, reading up on how a lack of sleep can damage your immune system, cause more stress, interfere with the body’s ability to heal itself – and all sorts of other apparently bad stuff.
I am lol.
Waking up at 430am remains the simplest way for me to set myself apart from my peers.
My peers being other entrepreneurs, agency owners or otherwise.
How else do I find time to produce content like this?
At 430am (lucky you right!).
How else have I been able to produce an 80,000-word newsletter without it interfering my day-job of running the agency.
Look – I don’t want to feed you the BS about ‘millionaires wake up at 5am’ a la Robin Sharma and the like who have their clubs (although I have my own club lol).
There are many millionaires and successful people who sleep WAY more than this:
But hey – my days of being a professional athlete are long gone. And actually they never arrived.
I do sprint a mean 60 metres though….
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Over the months the cold shower and exercise in the AM have faded away.
I’ve (I do believe) found my balance.
I’m at my most comfortable that I’ve been with the 430am club after several months of tweaking and testing (that will probably continue to some degree).
Now, the night before bed (which is at around 930pm I start making my way – although I need to get that to 9pm) at around 10/1030 I’ll lay out my clothes for the next day next to the front door
Basically a black jumper and some trackies.
And then once the alarm goes off I’ll quickly slap it off before my girlfriend wakes up; sneak out the bedroom door into the hallway.
From there I’ll immediately change, head to the bathroom to pee, grab my laptop from the living room, push it into my backpack and finally put my socks on next to the front door and head out to the Ibis hotel (where I am now).
Here I’ll have taken a 1.5-litre bottle of water with me and order a cup of Earl Grey tea w/cows milk from reception (the only time I have cow’s milk – with tea or at my mum’s place).
And the day begins.
The cold shower and the exercise was always a struggle – so in time as everyone in the group stopped doing it literally – and I remained the only one – I decided to quit the elements I struggled with the most.
The early morning shower and exercise would send me back to bed soon enough.
Arguably it could be being at home.
I now MAKE SURE I leave the flat:
As I find the power of focus being away from home.
Anyway, I’m not sure how much I’ve been reflective about waking up at 430am and why I’m still doing it.
Well.
I believe if you’re watching – YOU should do it as well.
It is a challenge, but definitely doable – and an easy way to differentiate yourself from pretty much anyone.
No-one (it looks like) – voluntarily wakes up at 430am to start their day.
But my day allows me to really sink my teeth into something and do the ‘deep work’ that my good friend Zurab recommends I do more of:
That ‘deep work’ is this blog (although arguably you could say that no f*cking way is writing a blog deep work lol)
Outside it then I’ll focus upon whatever takes my fancy.
But there’s always at least one thing I’m working on at this time of the morning.
It could be my self-education which is what October and November were about – i.e reading up on property investing, buying businesses, self-help books and doing it all aggressively so.
Now it’s about the act of creation.
Of producing content such as this.
I’m not sure I’ve done an effective job of demonstrating why I wake up at 430am so I’ll dive into some other practicalities:
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The other challenges with it first:
- You do feel tired by around 2pm
- It does impact your social life – I’m useless after 9pm or so
- Right now I’ve been yawning my way through this post lol as I didn’t get to bed until 11pm last night
- I definitely don’t sleep enough
The reason I still do it is that:
It’ll continue to be the inherent competitive advantage I have over anyone. I get hours on the right side of the day to focus upon well…whatever it is that I want.
Passion projects like this with no set intention to ‘take over the world’.
And being able to itch my creative bug makes me intensely happy.
Don’t get me wrong – it still means I get productive things done – but it’s the room it gives me to decide which is what I love.
Beyond 8am I slide into my daily workflow of whatever it might be:
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Waking up at 430am is hard – and to be able to do it you need to have a reason that’s bigger than the cost that comes with it.
For me; it’s a commitment to the challenge I’ve felt that lives eternally within me.
More.
Do more.
Achieve more.
Push more.
What’s possible Deepak?
What are you capable of?
What’s hard?
Do more of that.
The hard thing about hard things is that mostly – you’re on your own.
This time of the morning:
Is a time I love to be on my own!
When I’m four calls into my day; and I need to send a proposal, respond to my mortgage broker, answer the barrage of emails, calls and Whatsapp messages I get (even now:)
That’s when I want to middle finger my day and go back to being alone.
So I guess in summary – 430am is about a time of day to be with myself and to almost reflectively journal as I am now.
Btw.
When I was grabbing the 430am videos from YouTube I stumbled upon this video:
I only got through the first two minutes when I heard the words that forever speak to me almost as a call to arms.
Eminem utters those powerful words – ‘At this point I considered myself driven right? Until I met him’.
Woah.
What a way (for me) to start ending this blog.
Because that’s what I want people to feel when they meet me – it’s what I want people to aspire to do and be.
So I guess it’s not actually about 430 at all – it’s about what Eminem references and what is the hallmark of many a successful person (in any walk of life):
I feel somewhat emotional now and feel blessed to be able to hear such words and to feel such fire.
I wake up 430am because I always wish to be the hardest worker in the room.
And as I’m sat here quietly in the Ibis hotel at 5.51am clacking away at the keyboard – do you know what I’m really doing?
I’m sprinting towards success.
What are you doing?
