I Woke Up At 4AM For A Week
[0:00:02] So, I was going through my list of reasons
of why every man should challenge himself to wake up at 4 a.m. for at least a week.
And I thought, you know what, how about I show you the results? So, what you're about
to see is undoctored footage of me running my fastest 40-yard dash ever. [Video Playing].
And boom! Just like that, gents, a new world record at 3.5 seconds. All right, gents, you
got me. No, waking up at 4 a.m. is not going to automatically make you faster, but what
it will do is give you an extra 3 hours a day. Over 20 hours a week to focus in on whatever
you want. What did I do with my extra time? In 1 week, I went on 6 runs covering a distance
of over 22 miles. I managed to get back into journaling and filled out a total of about
14 pages. Knocked out a heck of a lot of the things in that honey do list to include hang
up the swing in the back for the kids, getting up on the roof, cleaning out those gutters,
and I finally fixed that sagging porch. Made breakfast 6 out of 7 days. And yes, every
single breakfast was scrambled eggs. But hey, it counts, right, and everything listed here
is personal. I haven't even gotten into the stuff that I was able to get done with my
business. And that takes me to the #1 benefit of starting early. You get a head start on
the day. Seriously, that was the whole point of me showing you that video of me running
a freakishly fast 40. Of course, I can run a 3.5 40 if I slowed down time, if I get a
head start. Gents, that’s exactly what you do for yourself when you start your day early.
You see, at 4 a.m., at 5 a.m., your phone is not exploding with text messages. Nobody
is calling you. Nobody is sending you emails. You have time for yourself. Time to think.
Time to put your day in order and that takes me to advantage #2, having the time to journal,
to think through, to plan your day. Whatever you wanna call it, you're simply getting the
thoughts out of your head. You're putting ‘em down on paper and this process is life
transforming. And let's talk about the magical thing that happens when you take everything
out of your head and you put it into a journal. You put it on a piece of paper. All of a sudden,
your mind is opened up, your mind is free to think. And this is the next point I wanna
stress on. You need time every single day to think. And it sounds simple, but it is
something most men do not do. They go through life working hard, climbing up a ladder that's
on the wrong wall. They find that they’ve been working on things that don't matter.
Guess what? When you’ve written all this stuff down, you can look at it and ask that
question. Does this matter? Is this important to me? And you may realize, hey, this is the
first I've asked this all week, maybe all year. Now, before we go any farther, let's
address the elephant in the room. Sleep or more precisely the lack of sleep. For me,
I wanna get my 8 hours. So, for this experiment, I was going to bed relatively early at 8 p.m.
I know some of you guys are thinking “Yeah. Antonio, if I tried that, it would throw my
sleep cycle all off.” My response is “Are you sure?” And even a more basic question,
“Are you tracking your sleep?” Gents, if you want to wake up earlier, if you want
to track, analyze, and improve your sleep, you need to check out the app, Sleep Cycle.
Guys, Sleep Cycle is the sponsor of today's video and I absolutely love what these guys
are doing. So, this is an easy app you install right on your phone and this is the only device
you need to be able to measure, improve, and track your sleep night after night. The second
feature I absolutely love, the wakeup window. So, basically analyzes when you're in light
sleep and when it's close to your wakeup time and it will wake you up a little bit early
at the optimum time that your body is ready to get up. And I know I’ve talked about
not having your phone in the same room with you when you're sleeping, but the reality
is most of you sleep with your phone in your room. You use it as an alarm clock. So, you
might as well use it as a smart alarm clock. The third thing I love is sleep analysis.
And this is where they take your information after about 5 nights and they present it to
you in a way that makes sense. You actually get to see patterns in the way that you’re
sleeping from when you're going to bed to when you're waking up to how you sleep throughout
the night, when you wake up what levels of sleep that you’re in. And the cool part
about this is you can go back and you look at the history. You can see the patterns.
You can say, “Hey, why am I waking up all the time at 2 a.m., at 1 a.m.? Am I sleeping
well?” And this is what's really cool, is you get these insights. These are like little
nuggets of how you can make improvements. Small things that you can do to improve. Then
they actually give you sleep training, so if you wanna get better and you wanna improve
your sleep ‘cause here's the thing. As you age, your sleep quality for the most part
starts to go down. So, that's what I love about this, is you can actually train yourself
to wake up earlier and to get a better night's sleep so you wake up earlier and basically
more refreshed. They've also got this great feature called sleep aid. And basically, it
leverages stories, music, even ASMR. So, if you're not familiar with this stuff, basically
techniques that you can use to improve your sleep. To get started, gents, go to sleepcycle.com/rmrs
today. And you’ll also get access to Sleep Cycle Premium for 7 days absolutely free.
Gents, this one’s a no-brainer. I mean, if you wanna wake up earlier, if you wanna
feel better, more refreshed, you need to start analyzing your sleep, use sleep cycle. Use
that link down in the description to get the best deal out there. This company has been
around for over a decade. I absolutely love what they’re doing, highly recommend it.
Next up, let's talk exercise. And you know the benefits of exercise. Everyone has told
you about the importance of exercise, but why aren't you doing it?
[0:05:03] It’s so simple because most of us make the
time excuse. The beautiful thing about waking up at 4 a.m., I had no excuse at all. In fact,
going for my run at 5:30 in the morning was pretty darn easy ‘cause I had already been
up an hour and a half. In fact, I already had my coffee and I was actually rearing to
get out there. I was getting bored. I wanted to take a break from everything else I was
working on. Point being is it was very easy to make time for exercise when I had all of
this time. And I was not only able to exercise, I was actually able to justify going on a
little bit longer of a run to actually include a little bit of a walk, to spend 40 minutes
doing yoga, which normally I would actually have trouble either choosing running or yoga.
And there were many mornings I was able to do both. And yes, I know a lot of you guys
are exercising in the afternoons, in the evening and that's cool, but I still think you get
a lot more benefits when you stretch when you exercise in the morning especially as
you age because it basically gives you energy throughout the day. You’ve got that runner’s
high. You've got that great feeling going throughout your work day, not happening right
at the end of your day when you're going into sleep. So, about 20 hours after you've exercised,
there's just a lot of endorphins running through. I would rather have the peak of that coming
right after I've exercised and going right into my workday. Another benefit I experienced
by waking up early at 4 a.m. is I got to wake my wife up at 6 a.m. with a kiss and cough.
So, from about 6:15 to 6:45, we would just simply sit down on the porch and talk. And
guess what? I had already exercised, I had already spent time on my company, I had already
gotten a lot of things done, and I’m ready to talk to her. She’s just beginning her
day. We’re having coffee together and I am in no hurry. And we’re able to actually
just talk and just enjoy each other's company. And let's get into breakfast. So, I have to
admit a couple months back, I kind of fell out of the breakfast habit. I don't know.
I just wasn't really hungry in the morning maybe it's my coffee. I put cream and sugar
in it. Yeah, it’s pretty fulfilling and I would go to work and then all of a sudden
start getting hunger pains throughout the day. Here's the thing. When you wake up early,
I didn't have to eat immediately, I was able to go exercise, able to do all these things.
And come 7 o’clock in the morning, I am pretty hungry. I’ve already been up for
3 hours and I was ready to go. And guess what? I had breakfast made. Yes, scrambled eggs
again and again. I’d throw a steak in there occasionally. My wife would make some pancakes.
Point being, our kids would eat great. And guess what? I had this great family meal that
I was able to be there for my kids. So, this next benefit applies to you guys working on
a global team. My company, we've got people in the Philippines, Budapest, Ukraine, Florida,
Georgia. Here's the thing. All those time zones are head of mine. So, usually when I'm
starting my day 1, a lot of my team in the Philippines, they're pretty much near the
end of their day and this can be an issue whenever I need something back, I wanted to
run a sprint. So, guess what? When I was starting my day at 4 a.m., I was able to go into a
meeting at 4:30 a.m., at 5 a.m. And I'm able to talk with my people. I’m able to get
immediate feedback. They're not staying up till midnight. They're able to get their work
done earlier and I'm just able to go back and forth. I found that we got a lot done
in 2 hours. A lot more done than we were getting in 4 to 5 hours later in the day because people
are already taken the day off. Now, another added benefit of waking up early is actually
I had a shorter workday ‘cause what I would start to do is end my workday at about 2 p.m.
I’d have my normal morning in about 8 to close to noon, come home for lunch, then come
back here to the office maybe for an hour, hour and a half and do the work that doesn’t
require that much. At about 2 p.m., I’m getting pretty tired because I’ve already
put it quite a bit of time. And guess what? I’ve been incredibly productive. The biggest
thing, I was able to get videos done early. The issue is last few months I’ve been filming
videos later in the day, going into the afternoon sometimes, sometimes even in the evenings.
Being at work till 7, sometimes 8 o’clock at night. And I felt bad. I was missing dinner
with my family no more. Because I was waking up early, I was getting those videos done
early and I was home pretty much every day by 3 p.m. So, I was able to hang out and get
some things done on honey do list and be home every night for dinner at 5 to 6 p.m. All
this being said, am I gonna continue to wake up at 4 a.m.? The answer is no. Here's the
deal. I don't like going to bed 2 hours before my wife, not tucking my kids in, not helping
them get ready for bed. That being said, I am gonna return to waking up at 5 a.m. because
I realized about 90 to 85 percent of what I'm doing in the mornings I can still get
done if I'm disciplined and start at 5 a.m. What video to watch next? How about why your
daily routine is so important? You hear about the importance of daily routines. In this
video, I talk about the psychology and why your daily routine is so much more important
now that you're stuck at home. Yeah, if you're stuck at home, watch this video because this
is going to open your eyes to the power of a daily routine.
[0:09:33] End of Audio