How to Turn any lost day into a productive one

Where does the time go during the day

There are 24 hours in a day, or 1,440 minutes. On average, a person sleeps about 8 hours, which means that we have 16 free hours when we are awake. We will reduce this number by another 7-8 hours, because most of them work on a standard schedule. And now we have 8-9 hours at our disposal.

A significant part of this time is spent on ordinary life — shopping, household chores, food, looking after loved ones who need care. Of course, everything depends very much on cultural differences. For example, residents of France, Greece, Italy and Spain spend How do people across the world spend their time and what does this tell us about living conditions? / Our World in Data it takes longer to eat than other Europeans.

In addition, there is a significant difference in terms of so-called unpaid work, for example, housework or caring for other people. The researchers found out Unpaid Care Work: The missing link in the analysis of gender gaps in labour outcomes / OECD Development Centre that women around the world spend 2-10 times more time on unpaid work than men. This affects the amount of free time for people of different genders. For example, in Norway and New Zealand, the difference is insignificant, and in Portugal and India, men have 50% more free time than women.

What is the 5 o'clock rule

So, everyone has the same number of hours in a day, and what we do at this time often depends on culture and gender. At the same time, some have more free hours than others, but any person still has at least a few hours that he can spend at his discretion. And how he spends these hours can determine which group he will end up in: those who succeed, or those who show mediocre results. This setting is the basis of the 5 o'clock rule.

In one form or another, many successful people adhere to this rule today, for example Elon Musk or Bill Gates, and the first was Benjamin Franklin, who allocated at least an hour a day to learn something new. This is the idea: you need to spend one hour a day on learning, reflection and introspection. If you do this from Monday to Friday, the same 5 hours will be typed.

The 5 o'clock rule gives the brain the necessary training, develops abilities and teaches discipline. It helps to get not only new knowledge, but also new skills.

How to use the 5 o'clock rule

When we come home after a long day, tired and with a buzzing head, most often we want to reach for the remote control from the TV, and not for a volume of Tolstoy. But the 5 o'clock rule has three principles that are not too difficult to follow.

1. Learn. As you know how and as you like it best — read books, listen to podcasts, watch educational videos, study interesting popular science articles.
2. Experiment. Getting better doesn't mean filling your head with facts. The people who succeeded didn't find the magic treasure — they tried to do something, failed and tried again. Journalist and economist Tim Harford in his book "Through defeats — to victory" cites the following principles of success: firstly, to offer and experience new things; secondly, to do it on such a scale that failure does not become a disaster; thirdly, to use feedback and learn from your mistakes. Try to do something unusual. Try to do something familiar in a different way. You will have fun and learn a lot.
3. Reflect. Defeats are a valuable source of information that helps improve our future. Every failure brings us one step closer to victory. Choose the way of reflection that suits you. You can keep a personal diary or discuss in detail with your loved ones what went wrong and why. When we reflect on our mistakes, we turn failures into learning experiences.