How would Bill Gates' five-hour rule change your life?

Bill Gates, the American business magnate and co-founder of Microsoft's computer software company, believes that time management can be changed forever with a simple hack that he calls The Five Hour Rule. This rule is elementary - limit your work to five hours per day and use the rest of your time to learn new skills, spend time with friends or family, and have fun doing whatever you want to do. Bill Gates said that this technique allows him to have more free time on his hands than ever before in his life, even though he has plenty of work to do on the side.

Read:

We all have time constraints, so why not use that time more productively than just idly sitting around, checking our phones, and reading Facebook posts? Instead, I recommend using your downtime to achieve something—anything. - Bill Gates, in his Harvard commencement speech in 2007.

Reflect:

How would Bill Gates' 5-hour Rule Change Your Life? I read for about an hour every night and look at many magazines. He told Inc. in 2012. However, I don't waste a lot of time surfing. It means I get more done during a day than if I were constantly distracted with Twitter or email or whatever else people do these days to fill their downtime.

Experiment:

Try for yourself for just one day: spend no more than five hours a day doing work-related activities. Take any breaks you need, and trust me—you will probably need a lot of them. Nevertheless, when it is time to get down to business, commit to focusing on that task exclusively until it has been done or 5 hours have passed—whichever comes first. You can also try varying intervals: half an hour, two hours, six hours... it is all good!

The Power of the Five Hour Rule:

To avoid procrastination, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates suggests picking just one task to focus on for an entire afternoon and promising yourself to work on it for no more than five hours. In his new book, The Road Ahead, he writes: I found that I did get many things done during those five hours and usually ended up working longer. Here is how to make it work for you.

Advice from Bill Gates

I read a lot and watch videos of people talking about their jobs. In five—hour blocks, I will stay up all night and learn about new developments in artificial intelligence or fresh approaches to teaching kids. - BILL GATES.