The 5 am club

Philip of Macedonia in a message to Sparta: “You are advised to submit without further delay, for
if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people and raze your city.”
Sparta’s reply: “If.”
“But just because your gifts have downsides to them doesn’t mean you
shouldn’t express them!” expounded the billionaire energetically. “You just
need to develop awareness around where they can lead you into trouble in
your personal life and then manage those traps. And this brings me beautifully
back to this morning’s learning model that really does set the stage for
everything you’ll learn about the transformational value of The 5 
AM
Club—
and how to lock it in as an enduring habit.”
The industrialist bent down, picked up a sea-worn stick and touched it to
the silk swatch.
“Please always remember the core maxim for elite performance that this
framework for personal greatness has been built around: with better daily
awareness you can make better daily choices, and with better daily choices
you’ll start seeing better daily results. The Spellbinder calls this 
The 3 Step
Success Formula.
See, with better awareness of your natural ability to achieve
great things, for example, or on how installing The 5 
AM
Method into your
morning routine will upgrade your productivity, you’ll rise from the
community of superficiality that currently dominates the Earth up into the
society of granularity. This heightened level of insight and consciousness will
then optimize your daily decisions. And, logically, once you get your daily
choices right, you’ll accelerate your leadership, accomplishment and impact
dramatically. Because it’s your decisions that make your results.”
“For one of our coaching sessions,” the billionaire continued, “The
Spellbinder and I met in Lucerne, Switzerland. Such a pretty city set on a
magnificent lake surrounded by breathtaking mountains. Sort of a fairy-tale
kind of a place. Anyhoo, one morning he ordered a pot of hot water, along
with some lemon wedges so he could have the fresh lemon tea he enjoys
sipping most mornings. Here’s the thing . . .”

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“This should be interesting,” the artist interrupted as he scratched an arm
with a tattoo built around an Andy Warhol quote that said: “I never think that
people die. They just go to department stores.”
“The tray arrived,” the billionaire went on. “Perfect silverware. Excellent
china. Everything calibrated to the highest order. And get this: whoever cut
the lemons in the kitchen exercised the deep-craft rigor essential to sustained
mastery by actually going the extra mile—and carving the seeds out of the
wedges. Amazing, right?”
The billionaire began to do the same quirky dance that he did at the
conference center. Then he stopped. The entrepreneur and the artist shook
their heads.
“A pretty uncommon level of care and attention to detail in a world of
such superficiality and performers stuck in apathy,” said the entrepreneur,
pretending not to be distracted by the mogul’s dancing.
“The Spellbinder calls the phenomenon pervading commerce these days
‘The Collective De-Professionalization of Business,’” noted the billionaire.
“People who should be working, delighting customers, showcasing
extraordinary skills, unlocking otherworldly value for their organizations so
both they and their firms experience success are watching inane videos on
their phones, shopping online for shoes or scrolling through their social feeds.
I’ve never seen people so disengaged at work, so checked out and so
exhausted. And I’ve never seen people making so many mistakes.”
The billionaire pointed the crooked stick at