It's not a huge shocker that successful people like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett all spend their free time reading and learning new things.
The bigger mystery is how they have the self-discipline to soak up 600-1,000 pages a day, as Buffett says he did early in his career. As much as I value an educational non-fiction read, I usually would rather see a friend, cuddle my cat, or scroll through Instagram videos of other people's cats after a demanding work day. And if my net worth was in the billions… I'm sorry, but what are books? My Birkin and I are in space.
Turns out, both today's wealthiest people like Elon Musk and O.G. thought leaders like Benjamin Frankin owe part of their success to the "5-hour rule," in which they spend at least one hour a day, five days a week reading, reflecting, and experimenting with new information.
In the spirit of starting a new year strong, I tried following the rule for a month. While it was harder than I expected (an hour is a long time when you're already supposed to work eight of them), it also got me to start a few things I had put off for ages.
Advertisem*nt
I finally started an online course I eyed for years
Since the 5-hour rule is a fairly loose one, I decided to give myself a few concrete options for things I could spend my hour on. The goal was to have some structure, while not locking myself into something that might get too tedious.
I told myself I could spend my daily hour on reading, weightlifting, writing, and career-planning.
I started an online course in digital marketing — a subject I've been interested in and thought could apply to my job in some way. Because digital marketing is very new to me, I found it the most engaging to pick up on lunch breaks.
To drive myself to go to the gym, I combined two options and put on "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" audiobook while I worked out. It proved to be exactly the kind of messaging I needed when I felt self-conscious about using the lat pulldown machine.
Advertisem*nt
And when I didn't want to do anything else, I just made my way through a 464-page advanced copy of "How to ADHD," a book I was reading for work.
I break up the hour to make it more manageable
The biggest challenge of sticking to the rule was devoting a solid hour of time every day. Sometimes, I would stick to the full hour, but more often than not, I divided it into 20-minute chunks, reading pages of my book or squeezing in course videos when I could.
Related stories
I ended up following more of the pomodoro technique which is based on the idea that most people can stay focused for up to 25 minutes at a time. The online course especially worked well for this, since it's self-paced and broken down into lots of smaller videos and quizzes.
Did I always spend exactly an hour each day? Look, I draw the line at anxiously timing myself with a stopwatch. The important thing is I read more actually useful content than petty social media takes, which is a miracle in itself.
Advertisem*nt
I treat the rule as more of a goal
Sometimes life got in the way, and I don't think that was a bad thing. My experiment coincided with the holidays, which meant I wanted to figure out gifts, host dinner parties with friends, or just spend my nights with my and my fiancé's families.
At first, I felt like a failure, but truthfully, I don't get the point of optimizing myself so much that I miss out on the whole point of being successful in the first place: Being able to relax and enjoy people's company.
I like the idea of the 5-hour rule as more of a guideline to strive for, but not beat myself up over when I don't hit it. Maybe that means I won't ever be rich enough to fly to Mars, but I think I'm on to something.
