Why I’m into meditation
By Bill Gates
| December 3, 2018
I stopped listening to music and watching TV in my 20s. It
sounds extreme, but I did it because I thought they would just distract me from
thinking about software. That blackout period lasted only about five years, and
these days I’m a huge fan of TV shows like Narcos and listen to a lot
of U2, Willie Nelson, and the Beatles.
Back when I was avoiding music and TV in the hope of
maintaining my focus, I knew that lots of other people were using meditation to
achieve similar ends. But I wasn’t interested. I thought of meditation as a
woo-woo thing tied somehow to reincarnation, and I didn’t buy into it.
Lately, though, I’ve gained a much better understanding of
meditation. I’m certainly not an expert, but I now meditate two or three times
a week, for about 10 minutes each time. Melinda meditates too. Sometimes we sit
to meditate together. (We use comfortable chairs; there’s no way I could do the
lotus position.)
I now see that meditation is simply exercise for the mind,
similar to the way we exercise our muscles when we play sports. For me, it has
nothing to do with faith or mysticism. It’s about taking a few minutes out of
my day, learning how to pay attention to the thoughts in my head, and gaining a
little bit of distance from them.
Andy has taken some heat for his low-barrier approach,
but he got me to take up meditation.
Andy Puddicombe, the 46-year-old cofounder and voice of
the popular Headspace app, was the person who turned me from skeptic to
believer. Prior to finding Headspace, I had read several books about
meditation, all of which intimidated me. They made me think that the investment
in terms of time and energy was just too high. Headspace made the barrier to
entry low enough for me. It’s just 10 minutes a day of listening to Andy’s
soothing British accent and trying to stay with him. Andy has taken some heat
from hard-core meditators for his low-barrier approach, but he got me to take
up meditation and stick with it. I’m glad he did.
If you want to try meditation for yourself, one good way
to ease into it—especially if you’re as skeptical as I was—is to pick up a copy
of Andy’s book, The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness.
Andy’s a witty storyteller and offers lots of helpful metaphors to explain
potentially tricky concepts, which makes the book an easy, enjoyable read. Andy
presents the evidence base behind these practices in sections called “What the
research shows” so you know the benefits are legitimate. And the book also
helps you see that Andy himself is legitimate. He’s an ordained Buddhist monk
who trained for many years in monasteries in India, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand,
Australia, Russia, and Scotland.
The book begins with Andy describing one of them: “Locked
in, day and night, surrounded by high stone walls and with no way of contacting
anyone on the outside, at times it had felt more like a prison.”
At another monastery, the monks served trainees curry and
rice every day, and they made the trainees eat it very slowly over the course
of exactly an hour. One super hot day, the monks placed in front of each
trainee a wonderful surprise: ice cream. “It was like being a child at a
birthday party when the cake comes out.” Unfortunately, the trainees soon
discovered they were not allowed to touch the ice cream until they had eaten
their curry and rice in the painfully slow way they’d been taught. As the ice
cream melted in front of him, he felt angry, then sad and guilty for feeling
angry—just as the monks knew would happen.
It turns out that monastic life wasn’t right for Andy. As
we learn in the book, after ten years he left and—I kid you not—became a circus
clown in London. He wanted to be fully engaged in the world rather than
cloistering himself away in artificially quiet retreats.
While he was a clown, he started teaching meditation to
those with severe anxiety and other conditions. A few years later, he started
Headspace to bring meditation to the masses. He felt that meditation was a
skill everyone could learn without sitting behind high stone walls or being
subjected to mind games.
Melinda and I enjoyed Andy’s work so much that we reached
out to him to see whether he might be willing to spend some time teaching our
family. He was glad to do it, which was a real treat for us. For a day and a
half, Andy helped us and two of our kids through exercises that are similar to
the ones you’ll find in the book. Andy was just as warm, humble, and real as
we’d imagined from reading his book and listening to him on the app.
I’m not sure how much meditation would have helped me
concentrate in my early Microsoft days, because I was monomaniacally focused
without it. But now that I’m married, have three children, and have a broader
set of professional and personal interests, it’s a great tool for improving my
focus. It’s also helped me step back and get some ease with whatever thoughts
or emotions are present. I like what I’m getting from my 10 minutes every few
days. I’m grateful to Andy for helping me on this journey.
