Michael Simmons coined the term The 5-Hour Rule after finding out in his research that the most successful people in the world shared a pattern – they devoted at least 5 hours a week to deliberate learning.

Now maybe you ask, why is it important to devote five hours a week of deliberate learning? The rate at which knowledge is becoming outdated provides some impetus to deliberate learning.

That is, just to stay relevant in the wake of this rapid evolution, and exponential growth in knowledge, we need to keep updating what we know.

Professionals across the world are increasing how much time they put toward learning. Given that we are competing in a global economy for jobs, clients, and customers, we need to (at the least) match others just to stay in the same place.

On a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t feel like our knowledge is becoming outdated, but Simmons cites some of the startling facts that show how off this intuition is –

Periodic Table. If you learned about it in high school in the ‘70s, you were told there were 106 elements. Students today are taught that there are 118. So over the last 50 years, the decay rate of this basic knowledge is 10%.

Number of Species. In 2017, 85 new plant and animal species were discovered. Scientists estimate that 90% of species have yet to be found, and it is estimated that we’ve only discovered .00001% of all microbial species on the planet. That’s one-thousandth of one percent.

Diet. In the ‘80s, bacon, butter and eggs were considered three of the worst foods you could eat for your heart. Now, however, many argue that they are actually healthy.

But more so, the fundamentals of medicine, chemistry, and psychology are slow-moving compared to new and fast-moving professional fields that are critical today – AI, apps, social media, big data, etc. – these professions barely existed 15 years ago!

So, to keep with the pace, we need to be deliberate in our learning, and Simmons recommends to devote at least 5 hours a week in doing so. Here’s how he came up with the number – 

A year into the future, 5% of our knowledge becomes outdated. To stay relevant, we will need about 250 hours of deliberate learning. In 5 years, 25% of what we know will become outdated; we’ll need about 1,250 hours of deliberate learning to stay relevant. Getting the drift?

10 years into the future, 50% of our knowledge will become outdated. To stay relevant, we will need about 2,500 hours of deliberate learning. Of course, we wouldn’t learn all of those hours all at once. If we spread out the learning, we’ll need to learn 5 hours per week, 50 weeks a year, just to stay up to date.

The bottom line is that those who do not keep learning will be left behind, in very real terms – stuck in an unsatisfying job or career plateau or, worse yet, unemployed.

Not learning at least 5 hours per week (the 5-hour rule) is the smoking of the 21st century. Let this article be your your warning label.

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