Have you ever kept trying to reach a goal and still failed? You kept working and working
but yet you can’t get to where you want to be. If you are in that situation, you should
try applying the 5 hour rule that’s used by many successful people such as Bill Gates,
Mark Zuckerbug, Oprah Winfrey, and Elon Musk. The 5 hour rule was created by Michael Simmons
and a lot of ideas in this video will be based on the article he wrote about the 5 hour rule
but it was a concept that was used way back by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin went from rags
to riches so there must be some things we can learn from him to replicate his success.
Specifically, you can implement the 5 hour rule in your life to try to reach your goals.
The 5 hour rule is a really simple concept. You spend an hour a day on deliberate learning
for 5 times a week, usually on the weekdays. Something interesting about the 5 hour rule
is that you will be less productive for the day when you take time out to implement the
5 hour rule but it will help you get more results in the long run. Most people focus
on how much they can get done in a day and improve their day to day productivity but
the 5 hour rule focuses on the opposite. The 5 hour rule makes you focus on learning before
working. This famous Abraham Lincoln quote sums up the idea behind the 5 hour rule quite
nicely. “Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first 4 sharpening
the axe.” It’s all about working smarter rather than harder. There are 3 main steps
for the 5 hour rule: reading, experimenting, and reflecting.
The first step is reading. Most successful people, especially billionaires read often.
If you are going to implement the 5 hour rule, you need to make time to read. If you don’t
want to read, audiobooks work as well. If audiobooks are not your thing either, educational
videos work as well but they might not be as effective. The second step is experimenting.
When you learn something new, you should apply it and see if it works for you. Remember,
knowledge is useless if you don’t apply it. You can read and learn all you want but
if you don’t use that information then you won’t get any results out of it. The final
step is reflecting. You can also reflect before you experiment but the order doesn’t really
matter that much. There are a lot of things you can reflect on to give you the results
you want. You can think about the results of applying what you learned and what you
need to change. You can also review your week and reflect on your actions to figure out
what to improve or what you learned. Aside from the 3 main steps, there is another
element of the 5 hour rule that you want to implement. You want to create some slack in
your day so that you have “empty space” for being creative. If that didn’t make
too much sense, slack can be defined as purposeful distractions or even free time. Have you ever
realized that you often get the best ideas during the most random times like when you
are taking a shower or when you are going on a walk? The reason that happens is because
your mind often gets creative when it is calm and free of distractions. It’s hard to think
of great ideas when you go through day to day life because you are often thinking about
other things. Remember, when you implement the 5 hour rule into your life, your days
are no longer about being as productive as possible. You want to find a routine that
can help you calm your mind and get your creative juices flowing. There are 6 benefits to adding
slack to your day which all tie back to the concepts of the 5 hour rule.
1. It allows you to plan out what you want to learn. The resources are out there but
it can be hard figuring out what you need to learn to achieve your goal. Most people
have plans on how to achieve their goals and you want to think of learning as a goal. Make
a plan for what you need to learn to get the best results.
2. It allows you to set aside time to learn. You can use the time to learn even more if
you already applied the 5 hour rule and want to learn more.
3. It allows you to deliberately practice things. You can focus on improving certain
aspects at a time or you can ask for feedback for how you did things.
4. It allows you to reflect and come up with new ideas. This is the most important thing
you can do with the empty space. Just like how you get amazing ideas at random times,
by creating slack and using it to come up with new ideas, you can hopefully get that
breakthrough idea to help you achieve your goals.
5. It allows you time to test your ideas. If you come up with an idea then you should
start trying to apply it. 6. It allows you to solve problems as they
come up. We all experience small nagging problems on a day to day basis. Most of us ignore them
but sometimes they turn into bigger problems. Having some slack allows you the space to
address these small nagging problems before they become something problematic.
You can either use that empty space to apply the 5 hour rule if you don’t have much time
or you can use that time to do some more reflecting and learning. How you use that time is up
to you. Do you read often? Leave a comment below and
check out this video on the benefits of reading and why reading is important if you are unsure
of if you should implement the 5 hour rule or not.