A Guide That Make You Rich & Life Easier – Part II
4. The 10-10-10 rule
This is another decision making rule that works great. It’s frequently used by people like Warren Buffet and other billionaire investors to figure out what to do.
Basically, when stressing over something, use the 10-10-10 rule. How will I feel about it in 10 minutes? 10 months? What about 10 years? After getting some perspective, you’ll notice how very few things end up worth stressing over.
A choice might feel good in the moment, but have negative effects over the medium or long term. The reverse is also available. Maybe something will suck in the next 10 minutes and even a bit afterwards, but it will pay off in the long run. Any decision you have to make run it by the rule of 10s and you’ll start making better calls immediately.
5. The 5 AM Rule
What do Tim Cook, Benjamin Franklin, Howard Schultz, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Richard Branson, both The Rock & Kevin Hart have in common. They all wake up freakishly early. They all sleep less than 6 hours every night, with the majority waking up around 5 AM.
Our solution whenever we deal with any sort of problem like this is to do 2 things:
“Learn More & Work More”
So far it hasn’t failed us. In our research we found an old piece by author Robin Sharma who’s been waking up consistently at 5 am and swore by it. He even made a rule of how to optimize this to be more productive splitting the 1st hour into 3, 20 minute activities.
First 20 minutes, immediately jump out of bed and start working out, push-ups are a great way snap out of that sleepy state. This gets the blood rushing through the body and wakes you up.
Next 20 minutes: are about learning something new.
The last 20 minutes are planning. Make a list of the objectives you have for the day and what you’re looking to achieve.
“By 6 AM you’re ready to crush it.”
In our experience, we felt like we knew a secret nobody else knew. We were part of the 5AM club of high achievers. We were crushing everything we used to do before 12. Then we took a short break and got back to work for another session. While everybody was working normal hours we were putting in those extra hours that made all the difference. That’s the time when we started investing in YouTube.
Since then, Robin Sharma has polished a lot this concept and has even distilled it all in a new book nicely called THE 5 AM CLUB.
6. The 2 Minute Rule
This is the most straight forward rule in this list.
The 2 minute rule goes like this:
“If it only takes 2 minutes to do, just do it.”
Never postpone or neglect activities that can be solved immediately. There’s something about our levels of stress that affect our productivity when we know we’ve still got more things to do. Also, getting small wins gives us a feeling of productivity and momentum that only builds up throughout the day.
“The 2 minute rule is the perfect cure for procrastination.”
If you don’t feel like doing a task, force yourself to do it just for 2 minutes, then you can give yourself a break if you want to. But for 2 minutes really give it your full attention. It can’t be that hard to focus for 2 minutes right?
Studies show that getting started is actually the hardest part of the task and if you can get over that slop you’re a lot more likely to finalize what you’ve started than actually quitting after the 2 minutes.
Think of it like this: let’s say you don’t want to brush your teeth. Tell yourself you’re going to brush only 1 tooth and if you want you can stop afterwards. Once you get that momentum on, it kind of makes sense to keep going right?
“Use the 2 minute rule and stop being lazy.”
See also: Part III
