Passing on 5 AM: Why I'm Not Sipping from the Early Bird's Cup
*Presses snooze three more times.*
This won’t come as a shock to those acquainted with me — I'm not exactly a devotee of The 5 AM Club. Now, I have to confess that I haven’t read the homonymous book by Robin Sharma (my focus was already stolen by Johann Hari — pun intended); however, the concept is quite simple: in an attempt to boost your productivity, personal development and overall wellbeing, you wake up at 5 AM each morning to fill the next hour with 20 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes of meditation or journalling, and 20 minutes of reading or learning. Sounds ideal, right? There’s only one problem: I’m basically useless before 8 am (fine — 10 am), no matter how many espressos (and, by espressos, I mean extra large cappuccinos) I down. And I know I’m not alone in this. So, maybe that’s why I find The 5 AM Club particularly problematic, especially as it’s being hailed as a magical solution to our inefficacies by countless famous entrepreneurs and celebrities (examples include Richard Branson, Anna Wintour and Tim Cook). It begs the question: who are we looking to increase productivity for and why? This is particularly relevant when we consider that Sharma is regularly consulted by CEOs and top corporate leaders, seeking his advice on how to keep employees inspired (read: profit-makers). I’m not keen on pushing another classic self-help book promoting a one-size-fits-all solution to what it deems are individual flaws without questioning systemic issues, but is there more to it?
When confronted with a new trend that doesn’t sound quite right to me, my reflex is to think back to our ancestors (yes, I’m weird like that). It goes back to my overwhelming feeling that we’ve become disconnected from our natural selves, almost like we’ve spent so much time working with tech that we’re living in a hybrid state, somewhere between human and robot, trapped in a competitive cycle with our machines. When I think back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, their energy was wholly spent on survival, and central to that was rest. If they dedicated every hour of their day to — well — hunting and gathering, then they would be incapable of adequately defending themselves if a predator were to suddenly threaten them. We see this with our animal friends, too. This is how we function as mammals: we expend our energy when needed for survival but a key part of that is also rest. Today, we’ve become so accustomed to constant stressors that we’re never in recovery mode. Perhaps, that’s what bothers me about The 5 AM Club: there’s never an emphasis on the need to fully switch off to recharge (unsurprisingly, I find the concept of ‘dolce niente’ in Italy or ‘flâner’ in France much more appealing). Rest is just as vital to our existence as ‘productivity’ is. Think about a professional football team. The players would never be able to win a game if they didn’t also dedicate time to relaxation and getting enough sleep. That said, due to the economic and social pressures of our current society, allowing ourselves to ‘switch off’ is easier said than done.
‘At the moment, the sane decision looks like an impossible luxury to the majority of us. Most people can’t slow down, because they fear that if they do, they’ll lose their jobs or their status. […] This is why telling people what they need to do to improve their attention — do one thing at a time, sleep more, read more books, let your mind wander — can so easily curdle into cruel optimism. The way our society works at the moment means they can’t do those things. But it doesn’t have to be this way.' - Johann Hari, Stolen Focus
The 5 AM Club was designed to boost productivity. You wake up, follow your 20-20-20 strategy, and then you’re ready for work, pumped, but then, of course, because you woke up at 5 AM, there’s little room for anything else. You go home, shower, sleep and repeat your ‘productive cycle’. You may have gained 20 minutes to teach yourself something in the morning, but you’re left with very little space for socialising and community work, which we know is also vital to our existence as herd animals. In fact, according to a study published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry in 2013, loneliness or the ‘perception of being alone and isolated’ can be more dangerous than smoking, with a high degree of it often precipitating Alzheimer’s disease as well as immune and cardiovascular issues, among other negative health outcomes. Researchers have found that loneliness is just as lethal as smoking 15 cigarettes per day and lonely people are 50% more likely to die prematurely than those with healthy social relationships. I’m not saying that there is a direct correlation between rising early and loneliness; however, The 5 AM Club could exacerbate cases where people are already feeling more isolated (and that’s an increasingly large number of people).
In all fairness, I have some friends who can function on five hours of sleep. They go to bed at 1 AM and can easily wake up the next day at 6 AM, whereas I can sometimes get eight hours of sleep and still somehow wake up feeling like I was battling a bear the whole night. The truth, however, is that a lot of us are sleep-deprived. According to the National Council on Aging, around one in five adults doesn’t get enough sleep, with 30% of adults getting less than the recommended seven hours per day and an equal percentage suffering symptoms of insomnia. As a society, we’re not getting enough quality sleep, and I’m worried that promoting The 5 AM Club will only worsen this. You would have to train yourself to go to bed very early, which is difficult for many, especially with modern schedules (and even more so if you throw children into the mix).
Interestingly, Dr Michael Breus, a Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Sleep Specialist, has developed the concept of ‘sleep chronotypes’, which refer to ‘our natural disposition to feel alert or sleepy at certain times of the day and night’. He has split these into four types: bears, wolves (night owls), lions (early risers) and dolphins. This could explain why I can’t seem to focus on much before mid-morning (apparently, I’m a wolf, which explains why I often get epiphanies for my articles just as I’m drifting off to sleep — thank goodness for voice notes); others seem to hit a peak in productivity as soon as the sun rises. I’m wary of citing such a publicised figure, especially as he doesn’t possess a medical degree; however, this theory appeals to me more than putting everyone in the same 5 AM pot. For example, think back to when you were studying for exams — I’m sure some of your friends were waking up early to study, while others preferred to stay up late; they could retain information better at different points of the 24-hour cycle. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to diet, sleep or individual productivity because we’re all unique.
We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit. - Stephen Hawking
Importantly, I’m worried that there may be a gender bias when pushing for a ‘lion’s’ schedule of waking up at 5 AM. It is now becoming more widely accepted that women need more sleep than men. For instance, research published in 2013 concluded that women generally slept longer than men across all life stages, and were also more likely to suffer from insomnia, especially during pregnancy, perimenopause and at various points during the menstrual cycle (personally, the week before my period, a wave of exhaustion inundates me and I feel it particularly hard to pull myself out of bed in the mornings); they also tend to sacrifice more sleep to caregiving responsibilities. Of course, this is a generalised view; many women prefer rising early (according to some sources, Michelle Obama starts working out at 4.30 AM, for example), but it must be stressed that this is not the standard, especially as women tend to feel more pressure to fit a multitude of tasks into a single day. The reality is that women need more sleep, but they don’t often get it. Could The 5 AM Club then be another example of how we are pressured to keep up with men without acknowledging our biological differences?
Overall, I agree that we need routines when it comes to sleep. That said, we continue to emphasise productivity when we should emphasise balance and individual preferences. Why should we conform to each other’s schedules when we’re all different? Many companies now understand that flexibility is essential, as we don’t all possess the same biological clocks. However, I fear that this may be short-lived if we don’t push for this change ourselves because we will need to compete with AI further down the line. Like Frankenstein’s monster, the thing we’re creating is stripping us of our own life. What if quality of life and longevity are found in listening to your body’s uniqueness, rather than refuting it?
As Sharma states in his book, ‘Remember, every professional was once an amateur and every master started as a beginner. Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary feats, once they’ve routinised the right habits’. I agree with this statement, but does that mean we all have to habituate ourselves to a 5 AM start to succeed? What is success anyway; is it more time spent in solitude or together? Now, there’s an idea for a self-help book: how to embrace what makes us unique to encourage empathy in an era when we’re paradoxically more connected than ever, and yet, more disconnected from each other. I’d read that.