The 5 A.M. Miracle

In our world today, comfort may be the ultimate distraction and the defining enemy of greatness. Nothing will cause you to give up faster, let your guard down sooner, or simply lose focus with greater ease than comfort.

At the same time, to quote Albert Einstein, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

Creating an intentional, prioritized, and written plan for your day is everything. Planning how you will use your time is the number one strategy for achieving your own 5 a.m. miracle. It is the most important element in this book and it is the key difference-maker between success and failure.

I was first convinced to try out inversion after watching a series of videos, many of them from Dr. Robert Lockhart, an Australian physician who has been practicing inversion on a daily basis for more than 40 years.

At the end of the day, the questions you ask yourself should be related to effectiveness, not emotions. • Did I make real, tangible progress toward my most important goals? • Did I stay on track and avoid distractions? • Did I get the most value out of my day today? • Could I be more efficient tomorrow?

For years I have been in active pursuit of closing the gap on my potential, seeking to achieve greatness. As a personal development fanatic, I have found that greatness, like success, is a noble goal and worthy of pursuit.

Before I discovered The 12 Week Year I had already been using a system that was very similar to it, just without the formal title. I began implementing a Quarter System as my personal goal-achievement program about six months after I launched

In 1955 Cyril Northcote Parkinson, a British political analyst and historian, observed that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

To make the most of this strategy, schedule a focused block of time, isolate yourself, bring your favorite notebook, whiteboard, or journal, and ask yourself one vitally important life question. Write that question at the top of your writing space and then spend up to an hour brainstorming and recording as many answers to this question as you can.