Gretchen Rubin's “Power Hour” Re-imagined

I've discovered through trial and error that I much prefer reading Modern Mrs. Darcy talk about MMD explained how she'd re-imagined Rubin's weekly “Power Hour”.

Gretchen Rubin's work to actually reading it myself. One such post from last month really tickled my brain;

Rubin regularly designates an hour to knock out “tasks that are important but not urgent”. Those random things that pile up and can take literally months (or even years!) to do because we don't want to deal with the hassle and keeping finding reasons to put them off, even though we'd be much better off with them completed. Rubin used the example of taking clothing to be donated to a drop-off center. It doesn't actually take that long, and we're much better off without the clutter, but the energy investment of engaging with people and making time to veer off our usual routines can make it feel like a much bigger deal than it is.

MMD considered that idea, then adapted it to her current life situation – and I love the result! Instead of being overwhelmed with random small tasks cluttering her plate, she found that her biggest challenge was making time for larger tasks or projects related to things she wanted to learn/master but found it hard to carve out time for amidst a busy schedule. So she decided to try scheduling herself a Power Hour each week dedicated to pursuing a skill she wanted to learn.

That approach really got me thinking. If you dedicated one hour per week to something, by the end of the year you'd have invested 52 hours in learning and practicing it. As Josh Kaufman points out in his awesome TED talk, it may take 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a world-class Master of any given subject, but you can get more than functionally adept at something in as little as 20 hours!

Since functional adeptness is all most of us are shooting for in most areas anyway, in one dedicated hour a week is more than enough to add two new skills to your repertoire! As someone who has a lot of fascinating things I'd like to get into, that's an incredibly promising thought! I haven't settled on which skills exactly I want to focus on yet, but I'm determined to make up my mind and start experimenting with the re-envisioned Power Hour plan in November.

Would you consider adding this type of Power Hour to your schedule? If so, what would you like to learn?