When I first read about the 5am Club some time over the last two years, I was immediately intrigued. Jeff Sanders, in his 5am Miracle podcast, talks about this being a miraculous time of productivity and achievement, if not overly-dramatically so: "5am club is a way of life. It's a productivity strategy, and a means to achieve all you have ever desired."
At the time of first hearing about it though, I was (and perhaps still am) in productivity-recovery mode. Don't get me wrong, productivity of course is a good thing. But I'm learning it's a fine balance between focus on productivity and (at least for me), crossing the fine line into the pursuit of perfection, self-flagellation, and feeling a general sense of not-enoughness. It was a sense of constant running towards an ever-increasing goal. And I finally stepped off the mechanical walkway.
It was jarring at first, but then somehow this pursuit of everyday pleasures (see my instagram on #365pleasures) became my daily life here. I learned to live life on a slower tempo, take baths, sip my tea, notice trees along my lake walks (instead of just counting number of revolutions)... and yes, got pregnant on (because of?) this slower path.
The irony, of course, is that far from sacrificing my career for this type of daily luxuriousness, colleagues and clients respected my newfound personal boundaries (like not taking calls after 10pm), more work and responsibility came, and I began to transition from a manager role to a senior advisor.
As I continue to learn, sometimes the trade-offs we think we have to make in life are in fact, false choices.
And so is the case of the 5am Club. First seeing it in its primary pursuit towards achievement and productivity, I set it aside as "not for me at this time." At some point in new motherhood with the transition from survival to sustainability mode, I re-claimed the 5am Club as something to do for myself -- my own time, where I could meditate and do my "power hour" (20 minutes of meditation, movement, and journaling). But as any new mom knows, claiming one hour each day as one's own (without a set childcare plan) is a fool's errand. Sometimes Elliot would be up with me, or other times I'd be awake with him just prior, having just fallen re-asleep by the time the alarm wakes me up at 5am.
So now what I've stumbled upon is 5am as a "magic hour". Tyler and I finally watched "Midnight in Paris" -- a fun movie about a struggling author who runs into Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and other greats of the 1920s at a "magical" hour in Paris. It's a bit like that. Due to a combination of balancing work and family/friend time (in the US) and jetlag (back in Seoul), for the last six weeks or so, I've found myself up at 5am (and more like 3:30 - 4am back now in Korea).
I've found that when I label and expect that time to be either "productive time" or "me time", I get frustrated if/when I can't control what happens during that time (and you can imagine how well that works).
But when I relax into considering it "magic time", well, that's when the magic happens.
It's when I find my brother-in-law up at the same hour meditating, which inspires me to meditate too. Or find that Elliot is awake with jetlag too, so we cuddle, stare, and coo at one another in the guest bedroom and let Tyler sleep. Or, like this morning, I find myself alone, looking out at the view of our 29th floor high-rise into sleeping Seoul, reflecting on our last two years in this apartment, how lucky we've been, and how much I'll miss this place. And yes, sometimes it's been all about kick-butt amazing productivity. Instead of overly planning what exactly should happen at 5am (and getting frustrated when it doesn't), being up at 5am is now imbued with some sense of secret adventure, the giddiness of a rendez-vous with myself, those I love, and the universe.
So as wary as I initially was, consider me the newest member of the 5am Club. The benefits (and often the views) can't be beat.
At the time of first hearing about it though, I was (and perhaps still am) in productivity-recovery mode. Don't get me wrong, productivity of course is a good thing. But I'm learning it's a fine balance between focus on productivity and (at least for me), crossing the fine line into the pursuit of perfection, self-flagellation, and feeling a general sense of not-enoughness. It was a sense of constant running towards an ever-increasing goal. And I finally stepped off the mechanical walkway.
It was jarring at first, but then somehow this pursuit of everyday pleasures (see my instagram on #365pleasures) became my daily life here. I learned to live life on a slower tempo, take baths, sip my tea, notice trees along my lake walks (instead of just counting number of revolutions)... and yes, got pregnant on (because of?) this slower path.
The irony, of course, is that far from sacrificing my career for this type of daily luxuriousness, colleagues and clients respected my newfound personal boundaries (like not taking calls after 10pm), more work and responsibility came, and I began to transition from a manager role to a senior advisor.
As I continue to learn, sometimes the trade-offs we think we have to make in life are in fact, false choices.
And so is the case of the 5am Club. First seeing it in its primary pursuit towards achievement and productivity, I set it aside as "not for me at this time." At some point in new motherhood with the transition from survival to sustainability mode, I re-claimed the 5am Club as something to do for myself -- my own time, where I could meditate and do my "power hour" (20 minutes of meditation, movement, and journaling). But as any new mom knows, claiming one hour each day as one's own (without a set childcare plan) is a fool's errand. Sometimes Elliot would be up with me, or other times I'd be awake with him just prior, having just fallen re-asleep by the time the alarm wakes me up at 5am.
So now what I've stumbled upon is 5am as a "magic hour". Tyler and I finally watched "Midnight in Paris" -- a fun movie about a struggling author who runs into Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and other greats of the 1920s at a "magical" hour in Paris. It's a bit like that. Due to a combination of balancing work and family/friend time (in the US) and jetlag (back in Seoul), for the last six weeks or so, I've found myself up at 5am (and more like 3:30 - 4am back now in Korea).
I've found that when I label and expect that time to be either "productive time" or "me time", I get frustrated if/when I can't control what happens during that time (and you can imagine how well that works).
But when I relax into considering it "magic time", well, that's when the magic happens.
It's when I find my brother-in-law up at the same hour meditating, which inspires me to meditate too. Or find that Elliot is awake with jetlag too, so we cuddle, stare, and coo at one another in the guest bedroom and let Tyler sleep. Or, like this morning, I find myself alone, looking out at the view of our 29th floor high-rise into sleeping Seoul, reflecting on our last two years in this apartment, how lucky we've been, and how much I'll miss this place. And yes, sometimes it's been all about kick-butt amazing productivity. Instead of overly planning what exactly should happen at 5am (and getting frustrated when it doesn't), being up at 5am is now imbued with some sense of secret adventure, the giddiness of a rendez-vous with myself, those I love, and the universe.
So as wary as I initially was, consider me the newest member of the 5am Club. The benefits (and often the views) can't be beat.
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