The 1 Hour Rule is very similar to the 5 hour rule that Benjamin Franklin followed. The only difference in it is one more day. To make it simple, Benjamin Franklin would spend one hour, Monday through Friday, working on improving himself wither by learning or experimentation. He contributed that to his success.
Having said that with the pace the world is moving today you will need more. Not much more thought. Just one more day a week. That one extra day makes a huge difference. I shy away from making it a full 7 days a week because you need some time to let your brain rest and have fun. I have found that the one day of rest keeps you from burning out.
But dose this limit you to only working one hour a day on improving yourself?
My heavens no!!
I put this down as a daily minimum. If you can do more you certainly should. In fact most days you probably want to do more. I normally hit a minimum of 3 hours but I work on different things. I have and will continue to have days were all i do is work on myself. The whole day minus meals. You do not need to go to this extreme but you can if you want to.
But what is the purpose of this? Why so much time given to learning? I thought the point was to learn faster. Isn’t this spending more time on it? For some people this will be spending more time on learning. But their seems to be an immutable law of mastery. If you read Malcolm Gladwell book outliers you will come across the 10,000 hour rule. This rule says you need 10,000 hours to become a master of something.
Know 10,000 hours is a lot of time. And mastery is a noble objective. It can also be a very lucrative objective. But I don’t think everyone needs to get to that 10,000 hour mark. Most people seem to become an expert after about 1,000 hours. That’s what you are aiming for. 1,000 hours. So, we want you to get to 1,000 hours as fast as possible. This rule is the mechanism to get you there.
I’m sure some of you have figured out that it will take you 3 years to get their if you only do 1 hour a day, 6 days a week. if you compare that to the rest of the worlds 10 to 20 years to be an expert in something this is a lot faster. From what I have found there have been no exceptions to this rule. It takes me about 1,000 hours to become an expert at something. It will take you the same.
But this does something else that is also worth mentioning. You see learning is like a muscle. The more you use it the better you will be at using it. Because of this, your brain works better when you train it like a muscle. Understand that when you start you will want to stop. You will feel like you can’t go on. You will get fatigued.
Anyone who has started a new work out program will know what I’m talking about. After the first workout you normally are hurting tomorrow. After you have been doing it for a few weeks you will feel better. After you have been doing it a year you will hardly notice the fatigue. But the gains will be substantial. But you only get this with consistent work.
Wait you mean I will have to work hard? I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
Ok, I think it’s time for the talk.
You ready?
No I’m not going to go into how putting an hour a day helps you stay committed to learning. Now we are talking about things that are worth doing. Nothing that is easy has ever been worth doing. No one will care. If you want to be anywhere in life you need to do something hard. Becoming a famous actor is hard. Making millions is hard. Maintaining a marriage is hard.
You will always have to work at anything worth doing. Having said that, this particular skill is special. Instead of putting in the work for the rest of your life, like you have to with a marriage, this one is front loaded. After you have done the work, the reward for it keeps rolling in. The little bit of extra work you need to do is very easy and has a big payoff.
In other words after you develop the skill you instantly gain the benefit from it. Compare this to someone who works in a grocery store their whole life. They will work hard their whole life. If they save and invest well they might retire at an old age to live conferrable… after 60 years of hard work. A doctor on the other hand works even harder at the beginning to get through med school. After med school they start to make a whole lot of money, like $200,000 a year a lot. The work they do after that is relatively easy. Some of them can retire in 20 years if they manage their money well.
So. what sounds better to you?