Bill Gates reveals how he turned idle time into deep thinking: 'It was also crucial to my success'

Bill Gates also equated his experiences as a child with those of recent times when smartphones and social media have transformed childhood and adolescence.

Bill Gates recently shared a childhood habit that developed into a fundamental habit for him in adulthood that helped him succeed in life. It was also a habit that helped him run Microsoft.

"When I felt restless or bored—or got in trouble for misbehaving—I would disappear into my room and lose myself in books or ideas, often for hours without interruption. This ability to turn idle time into deep thinking and learning became a fundamental part of who I am," the billionaire wrote in his blog. "It was also crucial to my success later on."

During his time at Microsoft in the ’90s, Gates used to take an annual “Think Week,” when he would isolate himself in a cabin on Washington’s Hood Canal with nothing but a big bag of books and technical papers.

"For seven days straight, I would read, think, and write about the future, interacting only with the person who dropped off meals for me. I was so committed to uninterrupted concentration during these weeks that I wouldn’t even check my email," he wrote.

Gates also equated his experiences as a child with those of recent times when smartphones and social media have transformed childhood and adolescence.

"Would I have developed this habit if I had grown up with today’s technology? If every time I was alone in my room as a kid, there was a distracting app I could scroll through? If every time I sat down to tackle a programming problem as a teenager, four new messages popped up?" he wrote, adding that even though he does not have the answers, these are questions that everyone who cares about how young minds develop should be asking.