“If You Want an Edge in Life, Stop Competing at 9AM and Start Your Work at 3AM.”

Since I’m building several projects at the same time, I’ve gone back to the 3AM Rule.
Some of you already know — I’ve got another blog called 3amrule.com, and it’s all about waking up at 3AM and getting straight to what matters most.

But full transparency:
I haven’t been getting up at 3AM for a minute.
I haven’t written on the subject since September 2025.

Now that I’ve got real reasons to use the 3AM Rule again… I can talk to you the way I used to.

When I’m truly excited about accomplishing something worthwhile, I can barely sleep. I can’t wait to get downstairs to the kitchen table and start working again — creating opportunities, sketching out ideas, building new lanes. I start by writing my thoughts out on paper, running through a bunch of what if scenarios, organizing my entire day with a pen, not a keyboard. Writing every day is my therapy.

I’ll thumb through a book or two… not the whole thing, just chapters that spark something in me. That stillness in the early morning — that silence — that’s where my mind is the sharpest.

Even in radio, I used the 3AM Rule. I would hit the studio at 3AM sometimes, but most days I’d be there by 4AM. I’d spread my prep across the conference room table before our 6AM start, meditate, pray, dig through the internet, and get myself in that zone.

I loved being prepared for the show.

One of my students in the radio game, Shay Moore in Kansas City, doing mornings on (https://www.power1051kc.com/shows/the-shay-moore-morning-show/ ). She lives by the 3AM Rule too. She’s actually in the station at 3AM — dressed to the nines, focused, and ready. She doesn’t play with performance and the ratings tell the story. She was actually working at the Heritage station KPRS and cross the street to the Cumulus station and transferred her former listeners to her new platform. She’s a one-woman show, and she wants to be there early because she wants to win.

Now listen — you don’t have to wake up at 3AM to be successful. Let’s be clear about that.
But for me, the 3AM Rule is a weapon you can use anytime you want. I call it the unfair advantage of using unused
hours while your competitors are asleep. It drives my ambition. It gives my day structure and purpose. Not every morning, but it's a super power for me. Even on the weekends

From 3AM to 6AM, you can clear your heavy lifting before most people hit snooze.

I’ve got too many ideas bouncing around. So I’m always writing notes. So capture your ideas when they come.

Don’t lie to yourself and say, “I’ll remember.”
You usually don’t. Write it down now.

Thoughts travel at 24 billion miles per second, which is why you can’t remember that great idea later… it’s gone. It traveled on.

My wife is tired of all my notes around the house — boxes,  and boxes of papers — but I love going back to them. I pick those notes like flowers. Seeds planted yesterday, harvested today. Some of them feel like I wrote them just last night.

Most of my day is taken up by thinking and writing — because that’s my work. Thinking makes me articulate on the radio. Writing sharpens everything else.

So create your own schedule that gives you an unfair advantage.
If you want to put some distance between your contemporaries… wake up and work at 3AM.

And if you’ve never been, go visit my site:
www.3amrule.com