BigThink: 5-hour rule -How to turn a wasted day into a successful one
“We each have the same 24 hours available to us. What we do with those hours varies by culture and gender, but we each have at least a few hours to spend in leisure. The 5-hour rule asks us to devote at least one hour a day to learning, experimenting and reflecting. It's a trick used by the richest and most successful people in the world.
Even accepting the wisdom in the 5-hour rule, it can still come over as daunting. After a long day, with tired eyes and a throbbing headache, most of us will reach for the TV remote, not Tolstoy. But here are three easy steps to start your own 5-hour rule.
- Learn…however you can. Reading print on a book is one way of learning, but it’s not the only way. In fact, if you don’t enjoy reading that much, it’s likely you’ll learn less from it anyway. Today, podcasts, audiobooks, and spoken radio are all great ways to spend your hour. What’s more, the internet is full of educational, entertaining, and enlightening long-form articles, which are much more digestible than huge, hand-aching tomes.
- Experiment. Bettering yourself does not always mean cramming your head with facts. The most successful people in life were not those who stumbled on some magic treasure in the woods, but who tried and failed, tried, and failed again. In his book Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, Tim Harford says success means we “first, seek out new ideas and try new things; second, when trying something new, do it on a scale where failure is survivable; third, seek out feedback and learn from your mistakes as you go along.” Try something new. Try something differently. When we experiment, we both have fun and learn a great deal.
- Reflect. Failure is only valuable insofar as it improves the future. In the words of Samuel Beckett, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Each failure is different, and each defeat is closer to victory than the last. There are many ways to reflect. For some, it might mean a diary, journal, or ten minutes spent simply ruminating. For others, it could mean talking things over and unpacking what happened. When we reflect on our days and our mistakes, we turn failures into learning experiences. “
#Well-being #FreeTime #Success
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💬 Would you give the 5-hour rule a go? When was the last time you learned something new, experimented, or reflected?
@globalBraid3744
I should try this. I feel like on my days off work I feel so lazy and find myself at the end of the day feeling like the day was wasted. Thanks for sharing this!
@sunnyWriting4806
I can relate! I usually like to do at least one meaningful activity per day but when I have my days off, I also usually just spend it relaxing. I think that resting and taking a break from learning is also important. Before I was filling my free time only with learning and it did not help me to refill my energy, to be honest, so balance is necessary I feel.