I’m not 100% sure where I heard about it last week, but I was intrigued by a mention that Ben Franklin had a 5-hour rule around learning. Short version: he spent an hour a day, 5 days a week, learning.
I’ve basically been trying to do that myself, mainly through reading (but hoping to expand to spending more time with online courses). It surprised me that a Google search didn’t find more, but here are a couple articles that speak to how successful people often do the equivalent (and suggestions of what counts as learning):
- https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/317602
- https://medium.com/@michaeldsimmons/bill-gates-warren-buffett-and-oprah-all-use-the-5-hour-rule-308f528b6363
My focus right now is to make sure I can convert what I am learning into long-term accessible information. I am about 60% of the way through this book, and believe the slip-box method it describes will work well: How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers by Sönke Ahrens. More to follow on that once I finish reading it.
So, what do you think? Would you benefit by deliberately setting side an hour a day 5 days a week to learn?
Absolutely- the best ideas come to me when I’m reading about something or learning something. I do put the time reading your posts towards my hour allotment of learning though 🙂
Reading my articles count as triple time; quadruple on Tuesdays. 🙂