The Microsoft founder is turning 70. Let’s explore some of our our favorite leadership ideas, habits, and lessons he has shared over the year.
A version of this article originally appeared in Quartz’s Leadership newsletter. Sign up here to get the latest leadership news and insights straight to your inbox.
The impact Bill Gates has had on the world is difficult to measure. But he turns 70 on Tuesday, so now is a good time to take stock.
Gates and childhood friend Paul Allen had the ambitious goal of seeing a computer on every desk and in every home. They founded Microsoft, and their vision was pretty much realized across the world.
Microsoft turned 50 this year, and its Windows software runs about 70% of all desktop and laptop PCs on Earth. There are more than a billion active Windows device users.
Gates was a billionaire by age 31 — at the time, the youngest self-made billionaire ever. There was a 24-year stretch between 1995 and 2017 where Forbes ranked Gates as the world’s wealthiest person.
Gates’ legacy, much like his friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett, will be partly rooted in how much of his wealth he gives away. The Gates Foundation, one of the world’s largest private charitable organizations, has made grant payments of more than $100 billion since its inception 25 years ago, and Gates himself has pledged an additional $200 billion over the next 20 years.
It’s been an incredible run, and any of us might want to know how a person like Gates lives and works — so we can borrow some of that magic and ingenuity and apply it to our own lives.
So in honor of Gates’ 70th birthday, let’s explore seven of our favorite leadership ideas, habits, and lessons he has shared over the years.
1. Relentless reading and knowledge mining
Gates is a voracious reader. He has a bit of a cheat-code brain, according to Buffett, who once said in an interview that Gates reads really fast. Gates reads for a little over an hour each day, and that comes out to roughly 50 books per year.
We think he’d read a lot more of them if he wasn’t so meticulous about his process. In a 2017 video interview with Quartz, he talked about how he reads, taking many notes in the margins, and often reading authors and ideas he disagrees with.
“When you’re reading, you have to be careful that you really are concentrating, especially if it’s a non-fiction book,” Gates said. “Taking notes helps make sure that I’m really thinking about what’s in there.”
Creativity and innovation, making mental connections, and understanding complex ideas are all made easier through reading, he said.
“If you read enough,” he said, “there’s a similarity between things that make it easy, because this thing is like this other thing.”
2. Intentionally creating space for thinking
Among Gates’ routines are “think retreats.” For many years, he would take a few days or a week and isolate himself in a cabin on Washington state’s Hood Canal with nothing but research, technical papers, and a bag of books.
This was an intentional ritual to generate ideas. He would read. He would think. He would write about the future. The only person he spoke to was the person hired to bring him meals twice per day.
“I was so committed to uninterrupted concentration during these weeks that I wouldn’t even check my email,” Gates wrote on his Gates Notes blog.
Gates credits these think retreats as the impetus for major Microsoft initiatives like the accelerated development of the web browser Internet Explorer in 1995 and the launch of the Xbox video game console in 2001.
In addition to think retreats, Gates also evolved the way he managed his calendar over the years to create more room for thinking. In his 20s, he didn’t take vacations or stop working on weekends. He had every minute on his calendar packed.
Buffett’s calendar habits changed the way Gates managed his. According to Fortune, Gates recounted the story of Buffett sharing his calendar with him for the first time in an interview with talk show host Charlie Rose.
“There’s nothing on it,” Gates said, sharing that Buffett had taught him the value of protecting time to simply think.
3. The Two-Year/Ten-Year Rule
The Two-Year/Ten-Year rule is about planning for the future.
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10,” Gates wrote in his book The Road Ahead. “Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”
4. Give yourself grace
“You are not a slacker if you’ve cut yourself some slack,” Gates said in a 2023 commencement address at Northern Arizona University. “It took me a long time to learn [that].”
The same man who used to spy on employees by memorizing their license plates and watching who was and who wasn’t putting in hustle hours at Microsoft in the early years has evolved into a vocal advocate for self-compassion and caring leadership.
5. The automation magnification principle
Many companies are throwing AI and automation at broken processes. Gates warns: Fix your process first, then automate it. Otherwise you’re just creating faster chaos.
According to a 2025 survey by S&P Global Market Intelligence, 46% of AI proof-of-concepts were scrapped prior to production.
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency,” Gates said in The Road Ahead. “The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
6. The two-question problem-solving framework
Gates approaches big problems by asking two questions: “Who has dealt with this problem well?” and “What can we learn from them?”
Instead of reinventing the wheel, he suggests finding someone who’s already solved your problem, then learning from them and adapting it.
7. Audacious goal-setting
It amounts to little more than “dream big,” but it’s worth considering that it’s difficult to reach goals we haven’t set.What’s the biggest, boldest thing you could theoretically accomplish? What would need to happen in order to achieve that?
Gates and Allen set out with the mindset of seeing “a computer on every desk and in every home.” They did so through their work developing software, and convincing a budding industry that software wasn’t free and that it was something people should pay for.
As has been noted many times, Microsoft’s genius wasn’t building the PC — it was making sure every PC needed Microsoft software.
There aren’t many people who can say that they’ve literally changed the world. But Gates is one of them.
