5-hour rule: The secret of success of celebrities

About the author : The article is translated from sharing by Michael Simmons - co-founder of Empact - a website that provides insightful stories and perspectives from leading entrepreneurs in the world through articles and events. The event takes place globally, including events at the United Nations, Capitol Hill and the White House (USA).

At 10, Benjamin Franklin left school to become a trainee at his father's company. When he was a teenager, he did not show any special talent or talent except his passion for books.

Half a century since Franklin died, he was one of America's most famous politicians and inventors, and a successful businessman and author of many books that were read by millions of readers. known.

So what happens between those two times to create such incredible successes?

The answer lies in a successful tactic both in work and in life that anyone of us can use and the fact that it is increasingly widely used.

5-hour rule

In an article called "Malcolm Gladwell Got Us Wrong", researchers found a 10,000-hour rule that corrected a previously misunderstood thing: Different fields require one to spend a certain amount deliberate practice time to achieve the so-called world-class practice.

If 10,000 hours are not an absolute rule that applies to all fields, then what really makes ordinary people great is the world that is known today.

For over a year, I have spent time learning about the biographies of many of the most admired leaders around the globe, including Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg to see how how they apply intentional practice principles.

What I found was not enough to say that it was an academic study but it also revealed a staggering pattern: Although very busy, those talented people still spend at least 1 hour a day. (or 5 hours per week) throughout your career for intentional study or training. I call it a 5-hour rule and categorize entrepreneurs who apply this rule into 3 groups: reading, contemplating and experimenting.

Throughout Benjamin Franklin's adult life, he persevered with spending an hour each day on Delibrate learning.

Franklin's study time includes:

1. Get up early to read and write.
2. Establish personal growth goals (such as a list of good qualities to train) and track results.
3. Establishing a club for craftsmen and merchants who have the same aspiration to improve themselves and help the community.
4. Turn ideas into experiments.
5. Refection questions in the morning and evening.

Every time Franklin spent time on his busy day to implement the 5-hour rule and spend at least an hour studying, he could not do much in those days. However, in the long term, it is the best investment he has made.

Franklin's 5-hour rule shows a simple idea that over time, the smartest and most successful people are non-stop and purposeful learners.

How does the best leader apply the 5-hour rule?

1. Read

According to an article published in Harvard Business Review, "the founder Phil Knight worshiped his library to the point that when you enter it, you will have to take off your shoes and bow".

Oprah Winfrey also acknowledged that books play a very important role for her success: "Books are passports that bring me to personal freedom." She also shared her reading habits with everyone in the world through a book club founded by herself.

They are not the only ones. Evidence is to consider the reading habits of other billionaires:

1. Mark Cuban read more than 3 hours a day.
2. Bill Gates read 50 books every year.
3. Mark Zuckerberg read at least one book every 2 weeks.
4. Arthur Bank - co-founder of Home Dept read 2 hours a day.
5. Dan Gilbert - self-made billionaire and owner of Cleveland Cavaliers read 1 to 2 hours a day.
6. David Rubenstein read 6 books every week.
7. Warren Buffett spends from 5 to 6 hours a day reading 5 newspapers and 500 pages of business reports.
8. Elon Musk read two books a day from an early age to adulthood.

2. Experimental

For other entrepreneurs, the 5-hour rule is applied in reflection and reflection.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong asked the senior management team to spend 4 hours per week just thinking. Jack Dorsey is a habitual "wanderer". LinkedIn CEO Jell Weiner spent 2 hours a day just thinking. Brain Scudamore - founder of a company worth $ 250 million O2E Brands ponder 10 hours a week.

When Reid Hoffman feels "secret" about an idea, he often calls one of his friends Peter Thiel, Max Levchin or Elon Musk to troubleshoot.

When billionaire Ray Dalio made a mistake, he often logged into a system that was publicly built with everyone in the company. After that, he set the time to discuss with the group members to find out the root of the problem.

Billionaire Sara Blakely is a record lover. In an interview, she shared that she had more than 20 small notebooks to record the horrible things that happened to her and the solutions that flashed in the process of doing so.

3. Experiment

Finally, the 5-hour rule is also applied in another form, which is the experiment.

Throughout his life, Benjamin Franklin took the time to experiment and discuss with fellow comrades and track the results. Google is known for allowing employees to spend 20% of their time working on their own new projects. Meanwhile, Facebook also has its own promotion mechanism by encouraging employees to experiment with new ideas with Hack-a-Months.

The most typical example of applying the 5-hour rule in experimental form is probably Thomas Edison . Despite being a genius, Edison often approaches new inventions with a "poor" mindset so he can see them from the most basic to the deepest. At the same time, he will also easily identify feasible solutions and then, check on the system scope for each one solution. According to one of Edison's biographers, although he quickly grasped all the theories, he still considered them useless when dealing with solving undiscovered problems.

Edion applied this method so thoroughly that his "rival" scientist Nikola Tesla once talked about this trial-and-error approach as follows: "If Edison has to find a needle in the haystack, he "I will not take the time to think about the most likely place. Instead, Edison will constantly scratch every single grass until I find a new needle."

Power of 5-hour rule: Speed ​​of progress

Those who apply the 5-hour rule always have a great advantage at work.

Intentional training is often confused with hard work. At the same time, the majority of employees often focus on productivity and efficiency, not on progress. Meanwhile, they do not understand that only 5 hours of intentional training each week can help them progress faster than those who only know how to work hard unconsciously.

In an interview, billionaire Marc Andreessen pointed out the important role of the pace of progress: "I think that the start-up stories of 22-year-old founders were completely overblown. , the acquisition of skills and working methods is seriously underestimated. " People overestimate the value of jumping deep into a lake but the fact that the deepest dancer is most likely to drown. There is a reason why there are so many stories about Mark Zuckerberg but there are not exactly as many people as Mark Zuckerberg. Most of them are still floating on the lake surface. Therefore, the most important thing is to learn the necessary skills.

"If you have time to talk to the great CEOs, you'll find this in a real Mark Zuckerberg or any other talented CEO both in the past and present - they are encyclopedias. Letter about how to run a company and it's hard to achieve this when you're only in your 20s. You have to spend 10 years to train your skills to be successful ".

Consider the 5-hour rule like exercise

We need to forget the cliché that "learning life is a good thing" and think more about the minimum amount of time a normal person should take each day to build a successful and sustainable career. .

Just like when you are advised by your doctor about vitamin intake, number of walking steps or exercise to get a healthy body, you also need to be strict with yourself in how much time is spent. every day to purposely train in an information-filled society today.

The long-term impact of not studying is just as terrible as not building a healthy lifestyle. AT&T CEO has emphasized this very clearly in an interview with the New York Times as follows: those who do not spend at least 10 hours per week online learning "will make them obsolete with technology" .

See more:

1. 10 books "life change" are read by global entrepreneurs
2. 11 skills are extremely difficult to learn but extremely helpful in the successful path
3. Pomodoro 'tomato' method: Working focused, highly effective without fatigue