Most people say they don’t have enough time.

Not enough time to train.
Not enough time to read.
Not enough time to work on themselves.

For a long time, I said the same thing.

My evenings looked like everyone else’s. Dinner, a bit of work, then a couple of episodes of whatever series we were watching. One episode turned into two, sometimes three, and before long it was 11pm.

Alarm at 7am. Repeat.

Whilst there’s nothing wrong with that routine. Millions of people live that way and it’s perfectly normal.

The real question is this.

Do you want to be normal, or do you want to be capable?

Why I Decided to Try Waking Up Early

The problem for me wasn’t laziness or lack of discipline.

It was time.

I had training goals. I was running businesses. I had a family. Like most people, I constantly felt like there simply weren’t enough hours in the day.

I’m an avid reader, and over the years I kept coming across the same idea in books, the power of waking up early and joining what people call the “5am club”.

After originally dismissing it as nonsense, I eventually I decided to give it a go.

Honestly, I hated it.

Earlier in my life I had spent eight years working in the bar and nightclub industry. Most nights I wouldn’t even start work until 10pm. Late nights were normal for me.

Going to bed at 9:30 and waking up at 5 felt completely unnatural.

The Hardest Part of Building the Habit

Like most habits, the beginning was the hardest part.

Your body resists change. The alarm goes off and everything in you wants to stay in bed.

But once the habit forms, it becomes surprisingly easy.

These days I naturally fall asleep somewhere between 9 and 9:30 and wake up around 4:30 or 5am most mornings, seven days a week.

That routine now feels completely normal.

And what it gives me is something incredibly valuable.

Time.

The Real Benefit of Waking Up Early

Waking up early gives me two quiet hours before the rest of the house wakes up.

Two hours where the phone isn’t ringing, emails aren’t coming in, and nobody needs anything from me.

Two hours to train, work, think, or simply get ahead of the day.

Those same two hours used to be spent sitting on the sofa watching another episode of something on Netflix that, if I’m honest, didn’t really move my life forward.

Now they’re the most productive hours of my day.

Research into circadian rhythms shows that many people experience their highest levels of focus and decision-making ability earlier in the day. With fewer distractions and more mental clarity, the morning often becomes the most productive window for deep work.

For me, those early hours became a simple way to reclaim time.

You Don’t Have to Join the “5am Club”

Am I saying you have to wake up early to be successful?

Absolutely not.

Some people genuinely perform better later in the day. I have team members whose energy peaks around 8 or 9pm, and they’re often doing their best work while I’m already asleep.

The key isn’t copying someone else’s routine.

The key is understanding when your energy is at its highest and protecting that time.

The Real Lesson: Protect Your Peak Hours

What most of us struggle with isn’t motivation.

It’s time.

Training gets skipped because there isn’t time. Reading gets skipped because there isn’t time. Working on ourselves gets skipped because there isn’t time.

But often the reality is that time is just a habit away.

Changing my sleep routine created two extra productive hours in my day without sacrificing anything meaningful.

It has probably been the single biggest dial mover in my life.

My mornings themselves are very simple. I’m not someone who follows elaborate routines.

I wake up.
Take my supplements.
Make a coffee.
Spend an hour getting ahead of the day with work.
Then I train.

Because that work and training is already done, the morning doesn’t feel rushed.

When my young son wakes up and wants to play Lego or Playmobil, I have the time to sit with him and play. Even if it’s only thirty minutes, it’s proper time together and it never feels like I’m squeezing it in or thinking about the next thing I need to do.

Most mornings in most households feel rushed. People are trying to get out of the door, thinking about work, emails, or everything they haven’t done yet.

For me, the important things have already happened.

Nothing complicated. But incredibly effective.

And that’s the real lesson.

It’s not about waking up early. It’s about taking control of your time instead of letting it disappear.

Because once you do that, a lot of other things start to fall into place.

And that’s when you stop living normally and start building a capable life.