1. Enriching your mind

            2.  Feeding your physical life

            3.  Nurturing your emotional life

            4.  Tending to your soul

What this means is not reaching for your cell phone to check whether anyone liked your Facebook post, checking your texts because you need to see what fires or emergencies you need to deal with, or firing up your computer to check the emails that have flooded your inbox and begin your day by answering every one of them. As soon as you do any of these things, you’re setting up your day to be reactive instead of strategic. This really is a huge concept and is so important. When you first wake, you’re looking after you and only you. This is what it means to be in the five a.m. club.

This routine is really about dialing in on your precision. You’re all asking, what am I supposed to be doing at five a.m. when I would rather be sleeping? From 5:00 to 5:20 a.m., the only thing you’re meant to be doing is moving! Get some water and drink it in that first pocket of time, those first twenty minutes. You want to move, so do jumping jacks, aerobics, get on that exercise bike or treadmill, or grab a skipping rope—any workout where you’re sweating. When you sweat first thing in the morning, you release BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which helps repair brain cells damaged by stress. You know that mindset that has driven us all from birth and created all the havoc and emotional and physical health problems we all now struggle with? Yeah, that one. What that morning workout from 5:00 to 5:20 does is repair brain cells, increase your metabolic rate so your fat-burning engine gets electrified, and increase your energy.

When you work out first thing in the morning, you also release serotonin, which makes you happy. Even if you’re cranky and feeling miserable because you’re up at five a.m. to work out, that workout is releasing serotonin and dopamine, another inspirational neurotransmitter. Dopamine is so important because it’s the chemical that allows you to feel that fire in your belly that will help you build your career, your business, your relationship, your family, and do epic things with your life. Pretty cool, huh? Just remember, not anywhere in these twenty minutes is there time for you to reach for your cell phone. No, turn it off and keep it off. When you start this routine, you’ll start to notice how you feel when you first drag your butt out of bed, but after that first twenty minutes of working out, you’ll feel so different.

The second twenty-minute pocket, from 5:20 to 5:40 a.m., is really all about thinking. This is where I make my coffee and grab my pen and journal. Let’s get into this one: We live in a world where we’re all so fricking busy being busy, but if you really sit down and think about it, do you really know exactly what you’re doing that you’re busy being busy with? That second twenty minutes is about writing in a journal. Yup, I really said that. Use a pen and paper, not a computer or your cell phone, where you can jot some notes down. Get an actual journal, and take the time in your chicken scratch to be introspective. Write what you want your day to look like. If you’re going through a really painful or challenging time in your life where something isn’t working or you’re having problems and are frustrated and angry with someone or something or even yourself, because nothing seems to be working, write it out.

These twenty minutes are about reflection, thinking, and introspection in a world where we don’t do that anymore because we’re all addicted to our devices. Get deliberate and think about who you want to become, what you want to do, what you want your day to look like, what you want to accomplish, and write it down in your journal. This was how Robin Sharma shared this concept with me to really make it sink in: Imagine you spend your life climbing this one mountain only to get to the top and realize you climbed the wrong one. If you get your days right, your days are your life in miniature, and a great life is nothing more than a series of great days strung together.

The final pocket of the 20/20/20 is learning, so from 5:40 to 6:00, you need to adopt something called the 2× 3× Mindset. If you want to double your income and your impact, triple your investment in two key areas, your personal mastery and your professional education. Success in business and life comes down to being curious and learning. It’s not the smartest who wins; it’s the most curious. It’s the one who’s always learning and learns the most. This could mean listening to a podcast, getting into that course you’re taking, or reviewing your study notes from a conference. Consider rereading something you’ve learned to really dial it in so it becomes part of your routine.

It’s so important to be an eternal learner. It takes learning just one idea today to change your life. I’ve been to a lot of conferences and learned a lot of things, like many of you, but just going to conferences isn’t enough. You have to apply what you learn, review the notes over and over, and study them fifty times so you can deconstruct them and understand how to apply what you’ve learned and make it work in your life. Learning an idea without execution is delusion. Just remember that learning an idea and then executing it can be the difference between living an ordinary life and living something rare and exceptional. If you’re anything like me, you might need a reminder that all change is hard in the beginning, messy in the middle, and beautiful in the end. It takes 66 days for change to become an automatic part of your routine.