8 Highly
Effective Habits That Helped Make Bill Gates the Richest Man on Earth
Adopting
these habits may not make you a billionaire, but it will make you more
effective and more successful.
How did Bill Gates get to be the richest person in the
world, with a net worth around $80 billion? Being in the right place with the
right product at the dawn of the personal computer era certainly had a lot to
do with it. But so do some very smart approaches to work and life that all of us
can follow.
The
personal finance site GOBankingRates recently published a
list of 10
habits and experiences that make Gates so
successful and helped him build his fortune. Here are my favorites. How many of
them do you do?
1. He's always learning.
Gates
is famous for being a Harvard dropout, but the only reason he dropped out is
that he and Paul Allen saw a window of opportunity to start their own software
company. In fact, Gates loves learning and often sat in on classes he wasn't
signed up for. That's something he had in common with Steve
Jobs, who stuck around after dropping
out of Reed College, sleeping on floors, so that he could take classes
that interested him.
2. He reads everything.
"Just
about every kind of book interested him -- encyclopedias, science fiction, you
name it," Gates's father said in an interview. Although his parents were
thrilled that their son was such a bookworm, they had to establish a
no-reading-at-the-dinner-table rule. That love of reading continues, with Gates
publishing an annual list of his favorite books
of the year. Reading a lot is a great habit to
cultivate. Just don't do it while having dinner with your family.
3. He gives credit to others.
When asked in an interview to name the best
business decisions he'd ever made, Gates replied, "I'd say my best
business decisions really have to do with picking people." Even though he
and Allen have had a complicated relationship, he went on to say that choosing
Allen as a business partner was at the top of that list. We all need to be good
at promoting ourselves, but it's smart to give the credit to the people you
work with whenever possible.
4. He trusts his own judgment.
You
can have a really good career if you always listen to other people's opinions
and predictions. But to have a breakout career like Gates or Jobs, you need
to listen to
yourself first and foremost, even if the entire
world is telling you you're wrong. That's what happened when Gates and Allen
launched Microsoft. In a speech, Gates said the company was "based on this
wild idea that nobody else agreed with -- that computer chips were going to
become so powerful that computers and software would become a tool that would
be on every desk and in every home." Everyone said they were wrong, they
launched it anyway, and the rest is history.
5. He's conservative with cash.
"I wanted to have enough money in the
bank to pay a year's worth of payroll even if we didn't get any payments coming
in, and I'm true to that almost the whole time," he told an interviewer in
1998. "We have almost $10 billion now, which is pretty much enough for the
next year." How much money do you have set aside to cover payroll just in
case something bad happens?
6. He learns from his mistakes.
In an
2008 interview, Gates credited some of Microsoft's success to his and his
leadership team's ability to quickly recognize a mistake, say, "Oops, this isn't working," and try a
different approach. He's certainly made plenty of mistakes over the years that
he can learn from. Remember Windows Vista?
7. He gets plenty of sleep.
We all know how important sleep is. Instead
of bragging about how late he works and how sleep-deprived he is, Gates makes
sure to get seven hours a night, because he says he can't be creative
otherwise. That's definitely a good habit that everyone should follow.
8. He really concentrates on what he's doing.
Too
many of us are easily distracted and guilty of multitasking, even though we know it's dreadfully inefficient. Not
only does Gates resist the temptation to multitask, he also exhibits really deep
concentration while working on tasks. So much so that
he's been known to drift off to sleep while coding, wake up an hour later, and
pick up right where he left off.
You don't have to go that far. But the more
you can focus on what you're doing instead of wandering away to check Facebook
or stock prices, the better work you'll do and the more effective you'll be.
BY MINDA
ZETLIN
http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/8-highly-effective-habits-that-helped-make-bill-gates-the-richest-man-on-earth.html?cid=em01014week18a
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