Learn, Share, Grow – The 5 Hour Rule to Learning

Below is a video lesson from The Mission on medium.com on why learning constantly is imperative, as well as our key learning.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

5-Hour Rule: If you’re not spending 5 hours per week learning, you’re being irresponsible

By Michael Simmons

“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 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.”

Continue Reading Here.

https://medium.com/the-mission/the-5-hour-rule-if-youre-not-spending-5-hours-per-week-learning-you-re-being-irresponsible-791c3f18f5e6

Key Learnings:

• Why do the world’s smartest and busiest people find one hour a day for deliberate learning while others make excuses about how busy they are? (Barak Obama, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates for example). Because learning is the single best investment of our time that we can make.
• Intellectual capital is greater than financial capital.
• We are at the beginning of a period of what renowned futurist Peter Diamandis calls rapid demonetization, in which technology is rendering previously expensive products or services much cheaper — or even free.
• While goods and services are becoming demonetized, knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable.
• Those who work really hard throughout their career but don’t take time out of their schedule to constantly learn will be the new “at-risk” group. They risk remaining stuck on the bottom rung of global competition, and they risk losing their jobs to automation, just as blue-collar workers did between 2000 and 2010 when robots replaced 85 percent of manufacturing jobs.
• The problem isn’t a lack of jobs. Rather, it’s a lack of people with the right skills and knowledge to fill the jobs.
• Atlantic article: Employers across industries and regions have complained for years about a lack of skilled workers. In July [2015], the number of job postings reached its highest level ever(5.8 million) and the unemployment rate was comfortably below the post-World War II average. But, at the same time, over 17 million Americans are either unemployed, not working but interested in finding work, or doing part-time work but aspiring to full-time work.
• Fundamental level knowledge is gradually becoming its own important and unique form of currency. In other words, knowledge is the new money.
  Unlike money, when you use knowledge or give it away, you don’t lose it. Transferring knowledge anywhere in the world is free and instant. Its value compounds over time faster than money.
• 6 essentials skills to master the new knowledge economy

1. Identify valuable knowledge at the right time – The value of knowledge isn’t static. It changes as a function of how valuable other people consider it and how rare it is.
2. Learn and master that knowledge quickly – Opportunity windows are temporary in nature. Individuals must take advantage of them when they see them. Understanding and using mental models is one of the most universal skills that EVERYONE should learn.
3. Communicate the value of your skills to others – People with the same skills can command wildly different salaries and fees based on how well they’re able to communicate and persuade others.
4. Convert knowledge into money and results – There are many ways to transform knowledge into value in your life, ex: finding and getting a job that pays well, raises, building a successful business, consulting, building reputation as a thought leader.
5. Learn how to financially invest in learning to get the highest return – To get the right portfolio of books, courses, degrees, etc. within our budget, we need to apply financial terms — such as return on investment, risk management, hurdle rate, hedging, and diversification — to our thinking on knowledge investment.
6. Master the skill of learning how to learn – Doing so exponentially increases the value of every hour we devote to learning (our learning rate). Our learning rate determines how quickly our knowledge compounds over time.

• To survive and thrive in this new era, we must constantly learn.
• Working hard is the industrial era approach to getting ahead. Learning hard is the knowledge economy equivalent.
• Just as we have minimum recommended dosages of vitamins, steps per day, and minutes of aerobic exercise for maintaining physical health, we need to be rigorous about the minimum dose of deliberate learning that will maintain our economic health.
• Even 15 minutes per day will add up to nearly 100 hours over a year.
• Start your learning ritual today with these three steps

1. Find the time for reading and learning even if you are really busy and overwhelmed.
2. Stay consistent on using that “found” time without procrastinating or falling prey to distraction.
3. Increase the results you receive from each hour of learning by using proven hacks that help you remember and apply what you learn.