The 5 Hour Rule (The Habit of Getting Rich)

At the age of ten, Benjamin Franklin left school to be apprenticed to his father. He did not excel at anything other than reading books.

But half a century later, at the time of his passing, he had become America's most prominent statesman, its most famous inventor, a prolific author, a successful entrepreneur ......

What brought about Benjamin Franklin's success?

It was a law that everyone can learn, use and that everyone must use, that was at work.

Throughout Benjamin's life, he intentionally read for nearly an hour a day without interruption, which I call the Franklin 5-hour rule.

That is, one hour a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted learning. The learning encompasses all walks of life, while setting personal growth goals, such as a code of ethics chart, and verifying the effectiveness of one's implementation.

A club is created for those who desire to grow, to learn, read and grow together, while reflecting on themselves morning and evening.

He will squeeze in an hour of reading every day! Although there will be less time for work, in the long run it will undoubtedly be the best investment he has ever made.

Those who are the most successful and smartest are often the ones who learn every day too.

Warren Buffett spends 5-6 hours a day, reading books, newspapers and company reports.

Bill Gates reads 50 books a day, Zuckerberg reads at least one book every fortnight, Li Kaifu, Jack Ma ...... None of these successful businessmen read books consistently.

Charlie Munger said: I've never met a smart person who didn't read every day, not one!

What would it be like if the five-hour principle, became part of our lifestyle?

For the answer, one need only look at Josh Wietrzyn, chess master and world champion martial arts master.

Wietrzyn, author of The Art of Learning, did not squeeze in time for maximum efficiency; in fact, he did the exact opposite.

He deliberately left gaps in his daily life so that he could have free time to study, read, create and do things with quality.

He once explained: I live my life, providing free time for my ideas and my creative process on top of that, but also in order to cultivate a state of living which allows me to build a harmonious and deep relationship, with my colleagues.

Adding bits and pieces of time to our daily lives allows us to live more productively and grow faster.

How can I live a more creative and wealthy life?

1. Organise a study programme

This will give us time to know what we should study?

We can't just have things we want to accomplish, we should also have things we want to learn.

2. Practice deliberately

Instead of doing things mechanically and not making any progress, it is better to use proven rules to constantly optimise your workflow, your productivity and the results you get.

A salesperson, for example, may often use the same set of words.

But a salesperson who seeks to grow and improve will constantly think about his or her sales process, optimise his or her sales talk, and in turn improve his or her sales ability.

This means that we need to take the time to do deliberate practice and intentionally work on the skills we want to improve.

3. Reflection

For every major point of knowledge that you have learned, learn to think about its rules of use, scope of use, etc., and whether this new knowledge can be linked to what you have learned before.

At the same time, for every major thing you have done, you reflect on whether you can continue to optimise it and what mistakes you have made in the process of doing it.

In this way, we can better absorb what we have learned and at the same time help us to slowly develop our intuition for creative breakthroughs.

Taking walks and talking to friends are great ways to breed creativity and ideas.

4. Set aside deliberate time for learning

This involves reading, listening to lectures, chatting, getting involved in planning, observing others, etc.

5. Solve problems quickly when they first come up

Problems are like wounds, if you don't address them when they are small, and don't sterilise them, they could end up endangering your life.

6. Do small experiments that have huge potential rewards

Whatever the outcome of an experiment, it is an opportunity to learn and test your ideas.

For many people, they feel that the meaning of their existence in life is measured by how much work you do. So many people work faster to earn money and slow down the rate of progress.

The 5-hour rule reverses this balance and puts the focus on learning.

In fact, work can be learning, as long as you are constantly thinking about optimising space and improving yourself as you work.

For example, an employee imagines himself as the boss, and when something goes wrong in the company, he is able to solve the problem with the vision of the boss. If you can't solve it, you learn, improve yourself and find a way to solve the problem.

In the end, this employee definitely got promoted on the issue.

So, there is nowhere in life that you don't learn, a little thing, and if you know how to reflect on yourself at night, maybe you can get a great deal out of it.