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You are here: Home / Fitness / The 4am Rule

The 4am Rule

February 16, 2025 By Joel Runyon Leave a Comment

I read something that the reason you feel creative late at night or early in the morning is because the global hive mind is asleep and it’s easier to pull down creative thoughts from the aether.

Like the global consciousness highway is less crowded, so you can just speed recklessly across all 4 lanes.

Forget for a second that half the world is definitely up at that time anyways (listen, it doesn’t have to be real to make sense, make sense?).

I think the creative is constantly at war with the optimal.

I don’t know how many good things I’ve made in my life while living a balanced, optimized life.

Some of the most creative moments of my life haven’t been perfect sleep scores, they’ve been hours-long marathons, sleepless nights or things I’ve dreamt up on a red-eye flight.

The creative the act of carving something out of nothing and making an imprint on the current structure of reality.

Optimal is designed to help you prepare to do so.

But when you need to perform, create or act – you have to visit the limit. And you have to get comfortable there.

In other words, you can do Zone 2 training all day long to build capacity, but sometimes you have to test the thresholds.

(Bryan Johnson is probably having a stroke reading this).

When that time comes – if you’re pushing something out into the world, I think the 4am rule is quite apt. You should be waking up at 4am or going to be at 4am. It’s time to GO.

You should be waking up at 4am, or going to bed at 4am.

Obsession Hours (4am-8am, 12am-4am) are when magic happens.

— Zach 🏴 (@zachpogrob) January 2, 2025

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About Joel Runyon

I started IMPOSSIBLE to push myself to try to live a life worth writing about by pushing my limits, living an adventure & telling a great story by doing the impossible. You can get free updates in your inbox via your new favorite newsletter, free fitness training tutorials, and see all my businesses at Impossible X and our philanthropic efforts at Impossible.org

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