It was February 2019 in Columbus, Ohio. I was working a mid-level logistics job for a firm that specialized in cold-chain shipping—exciting stuff, I know—and I was obsessed with becoming a ‘high performer.’ I’d just finished one of those sleek productivity books that everyone on LinkedIn raves about, and I decided that from that Monday forward, I was a member of the 5 AM Club. I bought a high-end alarm clock that simulated a sunrise, I prepped my workout clothes, and I told my wife I’d be a new man by Friday. I wasn’t a new man. I was a shell. By Wednesday, I was staring at a spreadsheet of refrigerated trucking rates at 2:00 PM and I literally couldn’t remember my own middle name. I felt like a ghost haunting my own cubicle.
That time I tried to be a hero and failed miserably
The first few days were actually okay, which is the dangerous part. You get that initial hit of adrenaline. You feel superior to everyone else on the road because you’re at the gym while the sun is still a suggestion behind the horizon. I was at my desk by 7:30 AM, feeling like a god. But here is the thing nobody mentions: the afternoon. By the time my actual meetings started—the ones where I actually had to make decisions about $40,000 shipments—my brain was basically a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal. I wasn’t being productive; I was just being awake. There is a massive difference. I tracked my reaction time on a site called Human Benchmark during that month. My average went from a sharp 215ms down to a sluggish 280ms after just ten days of the 5 AM life. I was basically working while drunk on exhaustion. I remember sending an email to a client named Greg where I misspelled ‘logistics’ three different ways in one paragraph. The 5 AM Club didn’t make me a leader; it made me a liability.
I think we’ve been sold this idea that ‘winning the morning’ is the same thing as winning the day. It’s a vanity project. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. It’s a performance. We do it so we can feel like the kind of person who does it, not because it actually improves the quality of our output. I spent three months in that cycle, dragging my feet through the snow at 4:45 AM, and my actual billable output dropped by nearly 15%. Total lie.
The math of misery
Let’s look at the actual numbers, because the ‘grind’ influencers usually ignore biology. Most people need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep. If you’re waking up at 5:00 AM, that means you need to be asleep—not just in bed, but unconscious—by 9:30 PM at the latest. Who actually does that? Unless you have zero social life, no children, and no desire to watch a movie with your partner, it’s impossible. So what happens is you start shaving off 90-minute sleep cycles. You think you’re ‘gaining’ three hours in the morning, but you’re actually losing the cognitive depth required to do anything useful with those hours. Trying to force a 5 AM habit when you’re naturally a night owl is like trying to install MacOS on a toaster. It might look cool on a shelf, but it’s not going to make you breakfast.
Waking up early is just moving your fatigue from the morning to the afternoon. You aren’t creating time; you’re just shifting your exhaustion around.
I know people will disagree with this. There’s always that one guy who says he’s been doing it for twenty years and he’s never felt better. Fine. Good for you, Mark. But for the other 95% of us, we’re just walking around with a permanent brain fog that we try to cure with a fourth espresso. I personally hate the Oura ring for this exact reason. I wore one for four months and all it did was tell me I was dying because I stayed up until 11 PM once to finish a book. It’s a digital nag that turns sleep into a competitive sport, and I’m done with it.
The part where I admit I’m just a hater
I’m going to be honest: I think the 5 AM Club is mostly for people who don’t like their families. There, I said it. It’s an easy way to claim ‘me time’ and avoid the chaos of a normal household, but then you pay for it by being a grumpy zombie during dinner. I used to think Jocko Willink was the ultimate blueprint for success. Now, when I see those photos of his watch at 4:30 AM, I just feel tired for him. It feels performative. I’ve started to notice that the people who scream the loudest about their morning routines are often the ones whose actual work is the most vague. If your job is ‘being a coach,’ sure, wake up at 4 AM. If your job requires you to actually solve complex problems or manage people without biting their heads off, you need the sleep.
I’ve developed a genuine bias against anyone who mentions their ‘morning rituals’ in a first meeting. I once interviewed a candidate for a junior analyst role who spent ten minutes talking about his cold plunge and his gratitude journal. I didn’t hire him. I didn’t hire him because I knew by 3 PM he’d be useless, and I needed someone who could think straight until 5:30. Maybe that’s unfair. Actually, it definitely is unfair. But my experience has shown me that ‘morning people’ are often just better at telling you how busy they are, not actually being better at the work.
What to do instead (The ‘Normal Person’ Protocol)
I stopped the 5 AM nonsense three years ago. My life improved almost immediately. Here is what I do now, and what I actually recommend to my friends who aren’t trying to win a ‘most disciplined’ award on Instagram:
- Find your actual chronotype. I realized I’m a ‘Wolf’ or whatever those cheesy quizzes call it. My brain doesn’t even start working until 10:30 AM. Now, I do my easiest tasks (emails, admin) early and save the deep thinking for 11 AM to 3 PM.
- The 90-minute buffer. I don’t touch my phone for the first 90 minutes of the day. I don’t care if I wake up at 7 or 9. That lack of digital noise is worth more than three hours of 5 AM ‘hustle.’
- Sleep with the window open. This is my weird hill to die on. Even in the Ohio winter, I keep the window cracked. The cold air keeps you in a deeper sleep. If you aren’t doing this, you’re missing out on the only legal performance-enhancing drug left.
- Protect the evening. Productivity is built the night before. If I’m not relaxed by 8 PM, the next day is a wash regardless of when the alarm goes off.
I tested this ‘low-pressure’ approach for a full quarter. My billable hours stayed the same, but my error rate dropped by 22%. I was making fewer mistakes because I wasn’t fighting my own biology every single second of the day. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t make for a good ‘Day in the Life’ TikTok. But it works. Worth every penny of that extra sleep.
The ‘Deep Work’ lie
We’re told that the morning is the only time for deep work because the world is quiet. Morning silence is a drug, and like any drug, the comedown is brutal. You get two hours of ‘quiet’ and pay for it with six hours of brain-dead staring at a monitor. It’s a bad trade. I’d rather have four hours of high-quality, mid-day focus than two hours of early morning ‘clarity’ followed by a total collapse. Don’t do it.
I still struggle with the guilt sometimes. I’ll see a post about a CEO who wakes up at 3:45 AM to meditate and I’ll feel like a lazy piece of garbage for sleeping until 8:15. But then I remember that my job isn’t to be a monk. My job is to be a functional, creative, and somewhat pleasant human being. I can’t do that on five hours of sleep and a sense of moral superiority. I’m still not sure if I’m ‘winning’ at life, but at least I can remember my middle name at 2 PM now. (It’s Edward, by the way.)
Sleep in. Your boss will thank you later.