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In the article “Malcolm Gladwell got us wrong”, the researchers behind the 10,000-hour rule set the record straight:different fields require different amountsof deliberate practice in order to become world class.
If 10,000 hours isn’t an absolute rule that applies across fields, what does it really take to become world class in the world of work?
Overthe last year, I’ve explored the personal history of many widely-admired business leaders like Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg in order to understand how they apply the principles of deliberate practice.
What I’ve done does not qualify as an academic study, but it does reveal a surprising pattern.
Many of these leaders,despite being extremely busy,set aside at least an hour a day (or fivehours a week)over their entire career for activities that could be classified asdeliberate practice or learning.
I call this phenomenon the5-hour rule.
How the best leaders follow the 5-hourrule
For theleaders I tracked,the 5-hour rule often fell into three buckets: reading, reflection, and experimentation.
1.Read
According to anHBR article,“Nike founder Phil Knight so reveres his library that in it you have to take off your shoes and bow.”
Oprah Winfrey credits books with much of her success:“Books were my pass to personal freedom.”She has shared her reading habit with the world via her book club.
These two are not alone. Consider the extreme reading habits of other billionaire entrepreneurs:
- Warren Buffett spendsfive to six hours per dayreadingfive newspapersand500 pages of corporate reports.
- Bill Gates reads50 books per year.
- MarkZuckerbergreads at least one book every two weeks.
- Elon Musk grew up reading two books a day,according to his brother.
- Mark Cubanreads more than 3 hours every day.
- Arthur Blank, co-founder of Home Depot, readstwo hours a day.
- Billionaireentrepreneur David Rubensteinreads six books a week.
- Dan Gilbert, self-made billionaire and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, readsoneto two hours a day.
Wantto find the time to read?Sign up for the free webinar here.
2. Reflect
Other times, the 5-hour rule takes the form ofreflection and thinking time.
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong makeshis seniorteam spendfour hours per weekjust thinking.Jack Dorsey is aserial wanderer.LinkedIn CEOJeff Weiner schedulestwo hours of thinking time per day.Brian Scudamore, the founder of the 250 million-dollar company,O2E Brands, spends10 hours a week just thinking.
When Reid Hoffman needs help thinking through an idea,he calls one of his pals: Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, or Elon Musk.When billionaire Ray Dalio makes a mistake,he logsitinto a system that is public to all employees at his company.Then, he schedules time with his team to find the root cause.Billionaire entrepreneur Sara Blakely is a long-time journaler.Inone interview, she shared thatshe hasover 20 notebooks where she logged the terrible things that happened to her and the gifts that have unfolded as a result.
If you want to be in to company of others who reflect on what they’re learning with each other,join this Facebook group.
3. Experiment
Finally, the 5-hour rule takes the form ofrapid experimentation.
Throughout his life,Ben Franklin set aside timefor experimentation, masterminding with like-minded individuals, and tracking hisvirtues.Google famously allowed employees to experiment with new projects with 20% of their work time.Facebook encourages experimentation throughThe largest example of experimentationmight be Thomas Edison.Even though he was a genius,Edison approached new inventions withhumility.He would identify every possible solution and then systematically test each one of them.According to one of hisbiographers,“Although he understood the theories of his day, he found them useless in solvingunknown problems.”
He took the approach to such an extreme that his competitor, Nikola Tesla, had this to say about the trial-and-error approach:“If [Edison] had a needle to find in ahaystack,he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, he would proceed at once with thefeverishdiligenceof the bee to examine strawafterstraw until he found the object of his search.”
The power of the 5-hour rule: improvement rate
People who apply the 5-hour rule in the world of work have an advantage.The idea ofdeliberate practice versus just working hard is often confused. Also,most professionalsfocus on productivity and efficiency, not improvement rate.As a result, just five hours of deliberate learning a week can set you apart.
Billionaire entrepreneur Marc Andreessenpoignantlytalked about improvement rate in a recent interview.“I think the archetype/myth of the 22-year-old founder has been blown completely out of proportion…I think skill acquisition, literallytheacquisition of skills and how to do things, is just dramatically underrated.People are overvaluing the value of just jumping into the deep-end of the pool, because like the reality is that people who jump into the deep end of thepool drown.Like, there’s a reason why there are so many stories about Mark Zuckerberg.There aren’t that many Mark Zuckerbergs. Most of them are still floating face down in the pool. And so, for most of us, it’s a good idea to get skills.”
Later in the interview he adds,“The really great CEOs, if you spend time with them, you would find this to be true of Mark [Zuckerberg] today or of any of thegreat CEOs of today or the past,theyare really encyclopedic of their knowledge of how to run a company, and it’s very hard to just intuit all of that in your early 20s.The path that makes much more sense for most people is to spend 5–10 years getting skills.”
We should look at learning like we look at exercise.
We need to move beyond the cliche,“Life-long learning is good,”andthink moredeeply about whatthe minimum amount of learning the average person should do per day in order to have a sustainable and successful career.
Just as we have minimum recommended dosages of vitamins, steps per day, and aerobic exercise for leading a healthy life physically,we should be more rigorous about how we as an information society think about the minimum doses of deliberate learning for leading a healthy life economically.
The long-term effects of NOT learning arejustas insidious as the long-term effects of not having ahealthylifestyle.TheCEO of AT&T makes this point loud and clear inan interview with the New York Times;he says thatthose who don’t spend at least5 to 10 hours a weeklearningonline “will obsolete themselves with technology.”
Interested in applying the 5-hour rule to yourlife?
Bottom line:the busiest, most successful people in the world find at least an hour to learn EVERYDAY. So can you!
There are just three steps you need to take in order tocreate your own learning ritual:
- Findthe time for reading and learningeven if you are really busy and overwhelmed.
- Stay consistent on using that ‘found’ time without procrastinating or falling prey to distraction.
- Increase the results you receive from each hour of learning byusing proven hacks that help you remember and apply what you learn.
Over the last three years, I’ve researched how top performers find the time, stay consistent, and get more results. There was too much information to fit in one article, so I spent dozens of hours and created a free masterclass to help you master your learning ritual too!
