- Good morning, good afternoon, good evening.
Whatever time you're watching this video at.
This video is all about how waking up
at 5:00 a.m has changed my life.
(bright music)
So this video is a little bit something different
than I normal do on this channel,
but it actually ties into everything that I do,
and I think there's some information in this video
that I think you guys can greatly benefit from.
So we're talking about waking up early.
I know a lot of you absolutely despise waking up early.
Like if you saw that alarm blinking
or flashing or going off at 5:00 a.m.,
you'd be like this is the death of me.
Like I can't believe I have to get up at 5:00 a.m.
You gotta like shift your mindset
when it comes to waking up early.
There are some people that are night owls.
There are people that work till three, four in the morning.
Personally for me, I hit a wall and I get so bogged down
and I'm actually not doing anything effectively.
I used to stay up all night with my brother.
When we lived together years ago we would work
till two, three, four in the morning,
but like that just doesn't work for me,
and I've switched the way I do things to waking up early.
So recently I started getting up
even earlier than I typically do.
I've been getting up at five, six o'clock.
Five o'clock is obviously the goal,
but just getting yourself up at like five or six
makes a huge difference in your entire day.
It makes a difference in how you approach your work,
but generally I just wanna wake myself up early,
earlier than I normally do,
and the reason is that I use that time
for myself in the morning.
So if I'm getting up at five,
I'm not looking at my phone and I'm not checking emails.
I'm not looking at social media.
I'm not doing anything that is involved
with the outside world until later in the morning
like seven or eight o'clock.
If you get yourself up early
and just take some time for yourself,
it actually sets you up to have a much more effective day
and it gives you a lot more clarity.
I was having an issue where I was
just working 14 hours days.
Just crushing it.
Just doing everything that I thought I had to do
to get the work done but what happened is
when you get yourself in that kind of rhythm
of always working and always thinking about your clients
or your YouTube or anything that you're doing in life,
you end up being less effective
and you actually get a lot less done
than you typically would.
So what I do is I get up in the morning and I get coffee.
Little coffee right here.
My second coffee of the day.
But I get up.
I have coffee and I just move,
and by moving it could be as simple as a walk.
So I will have my coffee.
I don't check my phone.
I just grab it, I go out the door,
and I'll go walk a few blocks,
and just kind of go around the neighborhood.
Now more recently I've gotten back
into training for climbing again
because I got a big climb coming up in a few months.
So I'm getting up early and I'm going either to the gym
or I'm going on a trail run,
but honestly it's just getting yourself moving
and getting yourself out of that rhythm
of getting up in the morning,
going straight to the computer or straight to the phone
and just putting yourself into the rest of the world
and that's one of the issues is
when we're always focused on these external things going on,
you never have time to really think about things
that you need to think about.
And I'm not talking like super deep down
like making life changing decisions,
but what I'm talking about is just
taking some time for yourself
and just getting some mental clarity.
So there's a lot of ways
that you can do this in the morning.
Like I said, for me personally I like to move.
I like to either walk.
I love hiking in the morning or doing like a trail run.
Getting myself in nature.
Just getting away from the city.
Or if the weather's not very good, I'll go to the gym
or just kind of get myself into that moving rhythm.
For other people, doing something like a short meditation
or like yoga practice or something like that
would be super beneficial.
The other thing that I do is I sit down
when I get home from whatever it is that I'm doing
and I read a chapter of the book called The Daily Stoic
and the reason for this is it's short.
It's sweet.
I highly suggest this book for anyone
that just wants to get some more clarity
on what it is that they're doing,
but this book basically gives you one thought
and it gives you some time to think about it.
So it takes like a minute or two
to actually read the paragraph,
and then you sit down and just kind of
have a conversation in your head
about how your gonna approach the world for the day
or what you're gonna do.
Now when you push yourself to get up early
and take that break away from the world
and get yourself going what happens is
you end up having a different approach
in the way that you go about your day.
Your general everyday work is just not as stressful.
It just seems like things are fluid and they're moving
and even if you have a super challenging day
when you start off right, when you start off
with a little bit of clarity,
you actually get through it a lot easier.
For me personally I not only am running the whole YouTube,
this is what you guys see but I have a production company
that I'm running on the other side of the camera
and I'm working and I could be working
from 6:00 a.m. till midnight everyday if I wanted to
just 'cause there's always something to be done.
There's always more to do.
That's just the way that things are,
but you just can't, you can't get in that mindset
of just always working.
You gotta hustle but you gotta give yourself that time
to step back and get that clarity
and what happens is things will pop up into your mind
when you're taking this time for yourself
that you have been forgetting about
or that you just need to engage in a different way.
One of the other tools that I use is this app called Things.
It's on your phone.
It's on your computer but what it is
is just kind of like a note taking application,
but it's one of those things that I use.
Whenever I have a thought in my head,
I just write it in there right away
so that later when I'm actually sitting down at my desk
and getting ready to work it pops up on my computer
and I can go through those notes that I wrote to myself
and I actually don't forget all the different things
that popped into my head.
So if I'm out like doing like a trail run,
I might have something just bing pop up
that I'm like aw I've been forgetting to do this
or I need to do this in a different way,
or I found clarity on something specific
and I'm like that is exactly what I needed
to make this project work and so I'll write it
in my phone using Things.
It auto syncs to my computer
and then when I get home later
and I'm actually sitting down and working,
then I can approach that topic
and make it happen or get it done,
but I highly suggest just trying
to wake up maybe a half hour early
or even an hour earlier than you typically do,
so if you're waking up at seven, wake up at six,
and give yourself some time and just see what happens.
Yes you're gonna have to put yourself
to bed earlier so you're not always tired,
but usually most of us are spending our evenings
watching TV, drinking some wine, drinking a beer,
but one of the things you need to do
is cut that short a little bit.
Maybe not watch the extra hour of TV.
Maybe not have that extra beer
and put yourself to sleep earlier
so you can get up and have a little bit
of time for yourself in the morning,
and eventually you could work yourself up
to getting yourself up even earlier like 5:00 a.m.
where you're up at this hour
that there's not a ton of distractions.
There's not people emailing you.
There's not people getting a hold of you.
It's basically time for yourself.
So by the time it comes when everyone else is waking up,
you're ready to go and you're fired up
and you got everything that you need
to have an awesome, super effective day,
whatever it is that you're doing.
Alright guys, that's it.
Like I said, on this channel I do
a lot of filmmaking tutorials,
so if you're into filmmaking, photography,
just anything creative like YouTube stuff,
I highly suggest hitting that subscribe button.
There's a lot of awesome content on this channel.
Also just anything travel and adventure,
there's some cool videos that you guys
are not gonna wanna miss.
Guys, that's it.
I will see you on the next one.