Bill Gates’ Weird Reading Habits That Can Change the Way You Read Books
Don’t start what you cannot finish.
You probably know every year, Bill Gates — co-founder of Microsoft and one of the richest persons on this planet — reads around fifty books and then recommends a few of them for book-lovers like you.
But how much do you know about his reading habits? I hope, not much.
Bill Gates is a life-long learner who thinks that reading is absolutely essential to success. He reads a lot — almost one book per week, fifty books a year. But why does he read so many books despite having a tremendously busy and successful life? What’s the actual reason?
Gates answered this question in an interview with Time Magazine in 2017. He said, “You don’t really start getting old until you stop learning. Every book teaches me something new or helps me see things differently. I was lucky to have parents who encouraged me to read. Reading fuels a sense of curiosity about the world, which I think helped drive me forward in my career and in the work that I do now with my foundation.”
But Gates is quite old-fashioned when it comes to reading books. That means he prefers paper books to eBooks. And when he goes on a vacation, he always carries a big canvas tote-bag full of books. Isn’t it a little odd in this era of Kindle?
Anyway, no matter how odd it looks to carry a bag of books with you, eBooks can never give you the authentic feeling of holding and reading a book that only a paper book can offer.
Gates likes to hold his books with his hands and dive deeper into the ocean of knowledge. And unlike many of us, he never leaves a book unfinished, even when he doesn’t enjoy it that much.
In his own words — “I refuse to stop reading a book in the middle, even if I don’t like it. And the more I dislike a book, the more time I take to write margin notes. That means I sometimes spend more time reading a book that I can’t stand than a book that I love.”
Gates has a unique way of remembering what he reads. And what is that? He takes notes while reading. But not in a notebook. Bill Gates takes notes in the margins of the book he reads. Isn’t that funny?
“For me, taking notes helps make sure that I’m really thinking hard about what’s in there. If I disagree with the book, sometimes it takes a long time to read the books because I’m writing so much in the margin,” — Gates says in the Quartz interview while explaining how he reads books.
How many of you take notes in the margins like him? I hope — not many. But isn’t it a distinctive yet lovely way to get engaged with the book at a much deeper level?
Taking notes in the margins also brings out your inner thinker and inspires you to confront opposing thoughts with logic and clarity. It bonds you with the thought-process of the writer, and you start enjoying the book even more.
Gates recommends people block at least one hour at night for reading. According to him, five minutes here or ten minutes there is no help when you are up to reading a good book. That can be okay for watching YouTube shorts, listening to songs, or other forms of entertainment — but not for reading books.
He thinks that a good book requires your undivided attention if you truly want to learn something from it. Gates himself reads a little over an hour every night.
And you know what does happen when he loves a book? He continues reading even at the very late hour of the night. Because when you fall in love with a book, time just flies away.
In Gates’ early years, his elementary school librarian, Mrs. Blanche Caffiere at Seattle’s View Ridge Elementary School, introduced him to biographies of famous figures throughout history. Since then, he has become a great fan of nonfiction.
But Gates likes fiction as well. One of his favorite novels is The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald. He loves to explore different genres, including science and technology, education, business, medicine, economics, history, sociology, memoir, etc.
While exploring those, Gates loves to have a broad framework. It helps him remember what he reads.
He says, “If you have a broad framework, then you have a place to put everything which makes it easier to remember new details of information.”
That means if you want to read about science, you need to read the history and story of the scientists about how they progressed over the years. Gates says that this incremental knowledge is much easier for you to maintain and remember.
When you develop a timeline or map by reading enough about a subject, it will be easier for you to fit your future reads in that timeline and understand things in a better way.
Now, don’t you think that the reading habits of Bill Gates can teach you a thing or two and improve your reading habits as well?
I think you can do the following and see how it works for you —
- Don’t start a book if you cannot finish it.
- Block out at least one hour at night for reading.
- Have a pencil and write your thoughts in the margins.
- Diversify your reads; explore fiction, non-fiction, everything.
- Read enough about a subject to build a base layer of understanding.
Sources: Time, Gates Notes, Quartz, CNBC.
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