One chief commonality between these two business stalwarts is that they both have dedicated more than half of their time in reading and learning: Warren Buffet reads to the tune of 500-700 pages a day and Bill Gates takes out a week – Think Week – to read, learn and think about business, life, growth, and acceleration.
They have time and again reinforced that failure is tuition, learn the lesson (as put by Adam Toren). And whenever there is a low moment in my life, I have resorted to reading. These two business icons are my pillars of strength – especially when you want to take your brand to the next level.
Warren Buffet states that if you can read 500 pages a day, knowledge works like a compound interest and builds up. Over a period of time that knowledge translates into a breakthrough or a new pathway or new ground-breaking ideas that can catapult your success ratio.
But think for a moment: how many of us actually take out that time and invest in our learning? We all are busy doing our jobs and ‘winging it’ when we are asked something about such topics.
However, with changing times, the positive thing is that we all are reading even more. Why?
Our times demand even greater learning from us – be it entrepreneurship, jobs or even stay at home work, we are in an information world that is constantly changing. And to keep at pace with it, we have to invest in our learning to stay afloat.
In fact, today with the advent of millions of blogs online alongside new authors publishing new books via paperback and digitally, it surely is a strong indicator for us to wear our thinking caps all the time. As mentioned in Greg Mc Kneown’s post The One-Word Answer to Why Bill Gates and Warren Buffett Have Been So Successful Bill Gates has a record of reading 112 articles/ blogs every night, which has definitely set a precedent for us to follow suit in order to stay competitive.
Bill Gates reads extensively in not just making Microsoft the most world-renowned company, but he also looks at how other industries are thriving or losing their edge in the market. He is peripheral yet intense in his mission to make this world a better place to live through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – and many other mission-critical initiatives.
Well, this is not because he is rich so he can take this bold steps. Truth be told: he is laser-focused to make his living count.
As with Warren Buffet and his long-time business partner Charlie Munger: corralling facts and figures and thinking based on them has made them the smartest business owners and decision makers. Being the second richest man of the planet, Warren Buffet still lives in a humble house in the Omaha, Nebraska, home, which he bought in 1958 for $31,500. He never let any kind of insane success affect his humility and focused mindset.
And when you look at their kinship, these two have been each other’s best inspiring friends.
While there are many other qualities of these leaders, which I can write of – but nothing is more superior than being the world’s most serious and focused readers and life-long learners.
So the takeaway is: read and walk with the giants! And what better than patterning yourself with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet?
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