The 5-hour rule: How to turn a wasted day into a successful one

We each have the same 24 hours in the day. How will you spend yours?

Excerpt: By"I like to make chit-chat now and then. One of my go-to conversation topics — mostpeople’s go-to conversation topic — is TV. I might open with, “are you watching anything good at the moment?” This often opens a half-decent, mostly entertaining discussion. But sometimes, my opening salvo falls flat. The other person says something like, “Oh, I’ve not got the time to watch TV.”

It’s an answer that bothers me. For one, it’s laced with not a small whiff of condescension: If you’re watching TV, you must be lazy. But mostly, it bothers me because it’s not strictly true. What people mean is, “I’ve prioritized other things in my day.”

And that’s fine. We each have our own personal values, concerns, and preferences.

“I’ve not got time to watch TV” means “TV doesn’t interest me as much as this or that.”

The fact is that we all have the same number of hours in the day, and it’s up to us to decide how we spend them. Some people will most certainly have more “free hours” than others, but for most of us, we have at least a few hours to spend as we want.

And according to “the 5-hour rule,” how we choose to spend those hours might mean the difference between success and mediocrity."