“If a person will spend one hour a day on the same subject for five years, that person will be an expert on that subject.” -Earl Nightingale
Today I want to focus on the time you should devote to personal growth, tomorrow I will focus on ways to grow. I would recommend at a minimum of 1 hour of growth a day.
I know what you are thinking, “An hour a day, are you nuts?” Nope! I am convinced that if you want to do something great with your life you need to make personal growth a priority in your life. Realistically, the more you grow, the more you recognize your need to grow. The more you grow, the more you’ll need that hour. In fact, the more you grow, the more time you’ll need to spend on personal growth.
In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the rule of 10,000 hours. Malcolm explains how icons like Bill Gates and The Beatles put a minimum of 10,000 hours into their craft before making it big. How did they put in 10,000 hours? I am sure at a minimum, they spent an hour a day growing their skills.
Earl Nightingale said, “If you’ll spend one hour a day on the same subject for five years, that person will be an expert on that subject.”
Growth in any area requires a lot of time and intentionality.
So . . .where you’ll get an extra hour a day to spend on growth? Well, let me ask you:
How many hours of TV do you watch a day?
How much time do you spend commuting?
How much time do you spend working out?
How much time do you spend looking at Facebook or Twitter?
How do you spend your lunch hour?
When do you go to bed? When do you wake up?
These are all times you could be using for personal growth. For me, I spend 5 a.m. – 6 a.m. reading and writing. I try to use 80% of my commute time to grow personally (20% to jam!), on all of my runs I listen to leadership lessons or sermons, whenever I have free time, I try to use it for personal growth.
My goal one day is to spend 50% of my time on personal growth (I got that goal from Bill Hybels).
A lot of people will argue they don’t have the time to grow, I would argue that you don’t have time not to.
What time could you carve our in your schedule to grow?
What activities could you replace with personal growth?
What would your life look like in 5 years if you devoted one hour each day to personal growth?
Decide today that you will spend a minimum of one hour a day on personal growth.
