The 1000 Minute Rule

You’ve probably heard of the 10,000 hour rule, a moniker about the time it takes to become a master at something… But have you ever heard of the 1000 minute rule?

How long is 1000 minutes even? Let’s do the math: 1000 minutes is 14 hours and 40 minutes. And for those of us who sleep for 7 or 7.5 hours, 1000 minutes every day is filled with what we choose to do during our waking hours.

The 1000 Minute Rule is something I heard Ryan Serhant talk about. He says, imagine that you have $1000 to spend every day, and every minute you spend doing something, that’s how you’re choosing to spend your money.

The reason this is so effective is because we’re accustomed to looking at money through the lens of how much value you get for it, whereas for time we don’t naturally think about the value we get from where we invest it.

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The 1000 Minute Rule highlights two things primarily:

-First, it holds you to a higher standard for how you choose to spend your time. It feels wasteful to doom scroll on social media, or take twice as long on a task because you aren’t focused. Every minute is a dollar spent, and if you’re putting it into things that don’t do or produce much for you, then you’re going to end the day feeling empty.

-Second, it helps you put bad things into perspective. Ryan uses the example of a call gone wrong. It could ruin the rest of your day if you let it, or you could call it what it is - a poor way of spending $5. Are you going to let a bad decision on $5 keep you from making the most of the $995 you still have left to spend? That would be silly.

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The overall lesson is that in every minute you’re investing your time, and if you want a richer life, you need to protect it and put it into the highest value things you can. It requires constant consciousness to check in and adjustment to redirect it. 

It won’t be perfect right away, but so long as you set the intention and commit to raising your standard, slowly but surely you’ll find the most valuable ways to invest your time.

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