Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have shared a strong friendship bond over the years. The two are reported to have hit off at their very first meeting at Bill Gates house, at a launch hosted by Gates mother Mary. The start of Gates and Buffett’s friendship can reportedly be traced back to this single day: July 5, 1991. Over the last three decades and counting, the two of the richest men in America have often spoken about each other and their friendship on public platforms as well as gatherings. Musing about Warren Buffet’s influence in his life, Gates shared a post about the tip he got from the world’s biggest investor on Meta’s Threads. “It took far too long for me to realize that you don’t have to fill every second of your schedule to be successful. (In hindsight, it’s a lesson I could have learned a lot sooner had I taken more peeks at Warren Buffett’s intentionally light calendar),” wrote Bill Gates. Microsoft founder shared the Threads post in May 2024 along with an The Atlantic article, titled: How to Be Less Busy and More Happy.Bill Gates had shared about this tip he received from Warren Buffet earlier too. In an interview with Charlie Rose in 2017, alongside Buffett, Gates said “I thought that was the only way you could do things,” Gates told the journalist. Gates had previously confessed to “every minute packed” on his schedule when he was CEO of Microsoft, a position he held for 25 years before stepping down in 2000. ″[I] remember Warren showing me his calendar … he [still] has days that there’s nothing on it,” Gates said, adding that Buffett’s less-busy schedule taught him an important lesson. “You control your time … It’s not a proxy of your seriousness that you fill every minute in your schedule.” Buffett noted, during the same interview, “I can buy anything I want, basically, but I can’t buy time. ”
Bill Gates shared the lesson at Northern Arizona University’s commencement
Gates shared the same lesson with students at Northern Arizona University’s commencement ceremony in May 2023. Taking to the stage, Bill Gates told students, “When I was your age, I didn’t believe in vacations. I didn’t believe in weekends. I didn’t believe the people I worked with should either.” He added how he even tracked his Microsoft employees, noting who stayed in the office late and who left early.Gates went on to add, “Don’t wait as long as I did to learn this lesson,” he said. “Take time to nurture your relationships. To celebrate your successes. And to recover from your losses. Take a break when you need to. Take it easy on the people around you when they need it, too.”
