When you think of what it means to be a successful entrepreneur, what names come to mind? For me its Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, and business leaders like Saeed Torbati. You may ask, what do these highly admired individuals have in common?
These individuals ascribe to common beliefs when it comes to being a successful entrepreneur. From starting new ventures every other day. To deliberately put into practice the art of the right attitude towards a business and the determination and grit to believe in their own personal success. Including a strong sense of self-confidence, in terms of their skills and abilities.
But most importantly a true entrepreneur knows that before they are able to properly combat the rigors of business and climb the corporate ladder they must first cultivate their mind. This is often done by utilizing one common principle: the 5-hour rule.
The 5-hour rule is pretty simple: Carve out one hour from each weekday to devote to deliberate, intentional learning. Self-starter education that is applicable to the greater goal of advancing your personal field, business, or brand. Practices that are made each day without exception.
The reason why the five-hour rule is so effective? It’s the driving force in priming the world’s most accomplished people to perpetuate their personal and professional success. This rule helps them work smart, and just faster and harder, as well as to focus on long-term self-improvement. Rather than current workloads, projects, or deadlines.
Think of Bill Gates. An entrepreneur that prides himself on annually reading 50 books. Should it be believed that these books are tied to his daily projects? Likely not.
Moreover, nothing beats an expert. While jumping head first into business, and blogging, is a great way to get your proverbial feet wet in the business, it can be shortsighted. As there’s no substitute for the benefits that good old-fashioned expertise and self-driven knowledge can bring to your field and mindset.
A great example, Mark Zuckerberg. A man who leverages his knowledge and expertise he has himself gained as part of his business principal. It’s his knowledge, and not his IT savvy, that has made him the business success he is.
There are literally tens of thousands of sites and app designers. There’s only one Facebook. And this is due to no small part that Mark Zuckerberg is a walking encyclopedic of how his business runs.
Now, if you’re looking for ways to utilize the 5-hour rule in your own day-to-day life and up your endeavors, here are 3 ways to get started:
Read
Want to be a baller? Start by being a bibliophile first! Besides Bill Gates, big-time bookworms include Oprah, President Obama, Mark Cuban, Nike founder Phil Knight, billionaire entrepreneur David Rubenstein, and self-made billionaire and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers Dan Gilbert.
Warren Buffett takes this habit to the extreme — he read between 600 and 1000 pages per day when he was beginning his investing career and still devotes about 80% of each day to reading.
Overall, each devotes daily time to reading, and many others have started their own publishing boutiques or literacy initiatives to help others learn the love of reading too! Book club goals, anyone?
Think
Taking time to each week to reflect on your personal and business life has been shown to improve job performance. It’s crucial and life-affirming for AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, who makes his senior team spend 4 hours per week thinking about their own personal goals each week before engaging in AOL-sanctioned tasks. All during for-pay hours on the clock.
Experiment
What do Benjamin Franklin, Coco Channel, and Thomas Edison have in common? They were known to take on risky experiments for their personal knowledge and business practices.
A great example? Both Google and Microsoft have allotted time in the day for employees to experiment with their ideas. Experimenting in business not only helps keep your faculties sharp, your ear to the streets when it comes to marketing trends, but your heart focuses on your purpose. It helps you know you’re why.
The #1 thing your business, blog, and platform cannot survive without.
So I say all that to say this: If you want to save money, start a business, or up your own personal or professional game, start by implementing the 5-hour into your weekly planning strategy today!
Now I want to ask, do you use the 5-hour rule at work or home? Has it helped you to reevaluate your current strategies and dealings? If so, I’d love to hear about it below!
6 Comments
Nicole, as a lifelong bookworm it’s always interesting to read about others who are. I’m afraid, in my almost 8 years of blogging, I’ve never really given it such focused “business” attention. Something to think abut.
I agree, its a generally missed topic that’s uber important to bloggers!
Great post. Body shaming holds all women back.
I agree. But what were your thoughts on the posts centra topic, the 5-hour rule?
How interesting! I’ve always tried to make learning and personal development a priority, but when you break it down into 5 hours it seems so much more do-able.
Doesn’t it? It makes it seem much more doable, even for someone like me who thinks herself, for better or for worse, academically-minded. I’ve read in a lot of blogging circles that we should all build administrative days into our monthly calendars for clerical dealings, maybe we need to build in daily scholastic ones too? And my hats off to Mr. Buffett, at 1,000 pages a day he’s my hero!