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SamTastic Weekly Tip: 1/15/18 - Could you follow the five hour rule?

Writer's picture: Jim MercerJim Mercer

What could you learn from Bill Gates? Warren Buffett? Benjamin Franklin? Could you follow their five hour rule?


“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time—none. Zero.” —Charlie Munger, Self-made billionaire & Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner


Why did the busiest person in the world, former president Barack Obama, read an hour a day, five hour rule, while in office? Why has the best investor in history, Warren Buffett, invested 80% of his time in reading and thinking throughout his career? Why has the world’s richest person, Bill Gates, read a book a week during his career? And why has he taken a yearly two- week reading vacation throughout his entire career?


Why do the world’s smartest and busiest people find one hour a day for deliberate learning (the 5-hour rule), while others make excuses about how busy they are? What do they see that others don’t? The answer is simple: Learning is the single best investment of our time that we can make. Or as Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”


Former President Obama perfectly explains why he was so committed to reading during his presidency in a recent New York Times interview (paywall): “At a time when events move so quickly and so much information is transmitted,” he said, reading gave him the ability to occasionally “slow down and get perspective” and “the ability to get in somebody else’s shoes.” These two things, he added, “have been invaluable to me. Whether they’ve made me a better president I can’t say. But what I can say is that they have allowed me to sort of maintain my balance during the course of eight years, because this is a place that comes at you hard and fast and doesn’t let up.”


So, look at your TimeTrack. When do you schedule time for reading and learning? Many of you are coming to the 11th Annual National SAM Conference next week. Great! If you aren’t coming this year plan for 2019. In the meantime, start scheduling an hour a week for reading. Ben did it. Bill and Barack do it. Can you?

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