Hisham Sarwar
The joy of understanding and learning is indispensable; it boosts enthusiasm and provides happiness. Most successful people in life do not lose their connection with books; they acquire knowledge to attain individual consistency and persistence to reach their desired goals. Our world recognizes people who are exceptional in their performance from the rest of the population. Therefore they engage themselves an insufficient amount of practice to acquire skills for attaining further improvements in life.
“Learning never exhausts the mind.” Leonardo da Vinci.
The development of a true expert depends upon the struggling and sacrificing journey. Successful people invest their time wisely by engaging themselves with learning. The five-hour rule is the most common trait that is found among the most admired business leaders of today like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg. Most of these leaders devote an hour of the day purposefully for deliberate learning. They practice this as a ritual to be radically more productive in the long run.
How do the leaders adapt to the five-hour routine:
For successful people, the five-hour routine falls under three categories as reading, reflection, and experimentation. By adopting these changes not only do they work smarter but also they reach new heights of success.
1. Read:
Every keen reader is not a leader but every leader is surely a reader. The most common habit of successful leaders no matter how much they are busy is that they read. They believe in acquiring knowledge based on the experiences of other people. According to an HBR article,
- Oprah Winfrey relates her success with reading books,
- Bill Gates reads 50 books per year,
- Mark Zukerberg finishes one book every two weeks,
- According to Elon Musk’s brother, he used to read two books a day his whole life,
- Mark Cuban dedicates three hours of his life every day to reading,
- David Rubenstein, a billionaire entrepreneur, spends two hours reading every day,
- Owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and a self-made billionaire reads one to two hours a day.
2. Reflect:
A person who learns everything but lacks thinking cannot reach the goals of success. Thinking and curiosity is what separates successful people from common people.
“A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
According to research, Tim Armstrong made his team dedicate four hours of every week for just thinking. Two hours are scheduled every day for thinking by LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner. Founder of a 250 million dollar company Brian Scudamore, O2E Brands, spends ten hours a day just thinking.
3. Experiment:
Experimentation is an innovative process that propels a culture to move forward. It helps us to prove things that we believe to be true. Therefore experimentation is critically valuable for any nation.
“Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science”. Claude Bernard
The world’s famous search engine, Google gives its employees the opportunity by allotting 20% of their work time for experimentation. Hack-A-Month encourages experimentation on Facebook.
Thomas Edison is known to the world today because he reached success after finding solutions for many problems. One of his biographers wrote,
“Although he understood the theories of his day, he found them useless in solving unknown problems.”
The Power of the Five Hour Rule:
Successful people are lifelong learners and their quest for knowledge never ends. In the business world today, the five-hour rule sets them on an advantage. The five-hour rule should be practiced in our routine lives in order to be successful. As our body needs regular exercise for being fit and healthy, in the same way, our mind needs a regular dosage of knowledge for getting motivated. This motivation leads us to reach our goals and live an economically healthy life.
“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn”. Benjamin Franklin
In an interview with New York Times, the CEO of AT&T focused precisely on learning. He said
“Those who do not spend five to ten hours a week learning online, will obsolete themselves with technology”.
