 One day, about 14 years ago, I announced to my friends who were my roommates on campus about a simple but difficult rule. They would have to follow if they must continue to sleep in my room. That rule was, we sleep by 11 p.m. and wake up by 3.30 a.m. or 4 a.m. and read like crazy. Because I forced everyone around me to follow some difficult rules, some of my friends abandoned me. And today, only God knows what they have done with their lives. The truth about life is, none of us can be completely free. In fact, the truly free people are those who discipline themselves not to be free. To be truly free, you have to give yourself some rules to live by, even if those rules are not easy at first. So, in today's video, I will be sharing with you the three life-changing rules I followed every day. And I hope you take one or two of these rules and make it yours. Before I continue with this video, if you're one of the people who have been wanting to know who is behind this channel, I'm now available on my personal channel and you can get to see me, know more about me or learn from me or even download my free books if you check the description box of this video. Now, let's get started with this video. 1. Never use social media in the morning Some of you who know my story know that I'm not a big social media person. I never use Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat. I deleted my Facebook in the year 2017 and only communicated with my employees and a few people via WhatsApp. But that's not all. I still use YouTube. While I don't consider YouTube a social media per se because of the millions of highly educated videos right here, the fact is that there are so many comedy skits and cat videos that can take away your three hours before you know it. I'm like everyone. I like to laugh. So even if I come here on YouTube to watch educational videos, comedy skits can take me away from such videos and waste many hours of my day. So, what do I do? I give myself a simple rule. Never go to social media in the morning. When I say morning, I may never go into social media until you finish the most important duty of the day. So let me give you an example. I am a morning person. I wake up usually around 4am. What I do is very simple. I focus the first 6 to 8 hours of my day on the most important thing I have to do in the day. Those 7 hours are the most precious in my life. My children and wife are asleep for the first few hours. Most people in the world don't call or text you in the morning and your energy level is at the highest. If you can invest those precious hours religiously, you can get more done in a day than most people would in 3 days. And when you think about the compound effect of that in a year, you won't even believe it. Now, let me make something clear here. I sometimes jump to YouTube by 10 or 11am, but that's usually because I've finished my most important duty of the day. Maybe I woke up by 4am and before 10am I'm done with my most important task. Then I can afford to waste one or two hours in a few entertainment before I go back to my desk. Here is my advice here. Use your morning for yourself. Make it a rule or even a religious commandment. Never go to social media in the morning or in the first 7 hours of the day, depending on when you start your day. Because morning is a special time. Only dumb people use it to consume what other people create. Except what other people create actually helps you in any way. Take for example, I have some good teachers I like here on YouTube. Though I don't usually consume their content in the morning, it won't be bad for me to sit down and listen to Seth Gordon or Dr. Jordan Peterson by 4 in the morning. But a comedy skit? No. So, don't give away your morning. It's the best gift any day can ever give you. 2. Sleep early if possible. Think about the story I used to start this video. It was the story of how I forced all of my friends to sleep less and read like mad. Yeah, it was helpful when I was young. But as I grew older, I discovered that sleep is actually an important thing. I used to be so bad in the morning. I used to wake up at 7.30 a.m. and feel like I had not slept more than an hour. I used to have very low energy in the morning until about 9 months ago. I changed something in my routine, which changed my life. And that is simple. I went to bed early. I go to bed by 8.30 p.m. and hope I can catch up with sleep before 9.30 a.m. This rule is so important to me that about two weeks ago, I had a visitor I respect in my home and I knew he needed us to talk till middle of the night. I had to explain to him politely. Please, I need to go to bed early or I will have a bad day tomorrow. I've read somewhere that every hour of sleep before midnight is like two hours after midnight. I don't know how scientifically true that is. But from my experience, every hour I sleep before midnight is as good as three hours after midnight. For example, if I go to bed by 12 a.m. and wake up by 7 a.m. or go to bed by 9 p.m. and wake up by 4 a.m., those are the same seven hours, right? Yes, those are the same seven hours. But any day I go to bed by 12 and wake up by 7 a.m., I wake up like a half-dead man. If I try to work, I can only go three hours before I start feeling dizzy. However, if I can get to bed early and spend the same amount of hours, those days after working for seven hours, I'll feel like I still have the strength to have seven more hours. I'm not a scientist and don't even know whether what works for me would work for you. But maybe you should try it. Try and go to bed early so you can wake up early and see whether that helps you to have better energy in the morning. If you don't trust my opinion, because I'm just a random YouTube guy, would you trust one of the smartest humans to ever leave? Well, Benjamin Franklin said, early to bed, early to rise, makes a wealthy man healthy and wise. 3. Cut out time to learn every day Just yesterday, I was telling my wife a vital lesson I learned about entrepreneurship and that lesson is, most businesses don't grow because their founders don't. It's actually very simple. Your business can never outgrow your personal growth. If you don't grow, your business or marriage won't. In fact, your health won't as well. Personal growth is not personal. It's about everything you are in the world to do. The more you grow, the more everything else around you grows. If you stop growing, everything else starts dying. I know this, so I discipline myself to separate time every day for conscious learning. Some of you who have subscribed to my personal channel often see my library. Hundreds of books you see there are not just for the camera. I love them and take the time to read them. By the way, if you want to know more about me or just be my YouTube friend, you can join my personal YouTube channel at the description box of this video. Back to what I was saying. Any human who doesn't make a conscious daily effort to develop his mind cannot go far in life. I have seen a few entrepreneurs falling into this trap. For example, they start businesses and work hard every day, hoping they will succeed, but they never do. And the reason for that is because they work harder on their businesses than they do on their minds. Jim Ront said, work harder on yourself than you do on your job. This doesn't mean that you have to read for eight hours every day because you work for eight hours. It simply means that you should be disciplined enough to turn off your TV set. Log out of social media, avoid gossip and pick up a book for an hour. Earl Nightingale said and I quote, if you spend an hour every day to learn something about your field, you'll become a national expert in five years or less. Think about that for a moment. So, you might want to ask me, why is learning so important? If you're the only person in your industry, have you have a business that doesn't have competition you don't really need to learn? But because the world is highly competitive, if other people know what you don't, they will crush you. And it's that simple. Now, here's the summary of this video. Because your morning is the most precious time of the day, I advise you not to go to social media or switch on the TV set for entertainment in the morning. Instead, invest those precious hours on yourself. Second, worship sleep. Respect sleep. See sleep is the most important thing and go to bed early if possible. Third, learn, learn and learn for personal growth. Because if you don't grow, your business and life can't. If you are one of the people who want to know who is behind this channel, now you can see me or even have some relationship with me. Simply join my personal channel in the description box of this video. I love you.