The 5 AM Club: OwnYour Morning/ Elevate Your Life by Robin Sharma.-Deserted gas station. Three in the morning. I said something about virtue to the clerk in the little glass box. She said, “You know what the greatest virtue is?” “Tell me,” I replied. “Getting up early,” she said. And then she shut off her microphone and turned away from me.

A year later, I started Early to Rise, a blog about – among other things – personal productivity. I wrote many essays about the importance of getting up early and getting to work before the rest of the world. Some of my readers weren’t happy with my stance. “Everyone has their own time clock, they argued. Mind your own business.”

I’m still an advocate for getting up early, even for people who, like me, consider themselves to be “night people.” So I was happy to come across The 5 AM Clubby Robin Sharma. I was hoping it would validate my personal experience with lots of science and terrific stories about all the people who attribute their success to early rising.

Alas, it is one of those parabolic books – in this case, a parable in which the guru is a billionaire. Ugh! Why did he have to be a billionaire?

I skimmed the book, looking for something new and/or insightful. Didn’t find it.