3 Things Dynamic People Do

 
Do you know that there’s one thing top leaders and business owners have in common? Each of them adopts the “5-hour rule”, i.e. they set aside at least 5 hours each week for these 3 things: read, reflect, experiment. Here are the 3 things dynamic people do with their time:
 
1. READ
 
Billionaire, David Rubenstein, reads 6 books a week.
 
Oprah Winfrey says, “Books were my pass to personal freedom.”
 
Arthur Blank, the co-founder of Home Depot, reads 2 hours a day.
 
Billionaire, Dan Gilbert, reads 1-2 hours a day.
 
You get the picture… they’re constantly absorbing new knowledge and broadening their perspectives. But, that is not all. They also do 2 other things:
 
2. REFLECT
 
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner sets aside 2 hours of thinking time per day.
 
Billionaire, Ray Dalio, logs his mistakes into a system that’s accessible to all his employees and schedules time with his team to find the root cause.
 
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong asks his senior team to dedicate 4 hrs a week to thinking.
 
Billionaire entrepreneur Sara Blakely journals extensively, and logs down all the “disasters” that have led her to bigger gifts.
 
Yes, they take time out to think deeply about what they’ve learned. And finally, they take action to validate their learning, through rapid experimentation.
 
3. EXPERIMENT
 
America’s founding father, Benjamin Franklin, set aside time throughout his life doing experiments, masterminding with like-minded individuals, and tracking his virtues.
 
Google was known for setting aside 20% of their employees’ work time for innovation, leading to the birth of big ideas like Gmail, AdSense, and Google Talk. [We say “was” because they’ve scrapped it for “focused innovation” in 2013, but that’s a story for another time].
 
Genius Thomas Edison would systematically test each and every possible solution to his innovations until he finds his breakthrough.
 
LEARN AND THINK LIKE DA VINCI
 
Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most brilliant minds in history, spends his entire life questioning and experimenting to find answers to his questions. In fact, learning, thinking, and experimentation are integral parts of the 7 “Da Vincian principles” behind his genius. Now go check out a book! 
 
Pressed for time? Cringing at that unopened 5th 3rd statement? We can help with BOTH of those items. Let’s Talk.
Mari Sandifer, Rektio Entrepreneurial Advisors

Mari Sandifer | Director of Marketing & Business Development

Mari joined Rektio as Director of Marketing and Business Development in 2020 after spending over 25 years in corporate finance and 3 years as a business owner. She holds a BS degree in Marketing and an MBA in Finance from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. Her CPA license is inactive (and morbidly obese).

Connect with Mari on LinkedIn