Bill Gates has some regrets. The Microsoft cofounder has openly admitted he wishes he’d spent more of his time with his family, enjoying vacations and weekends with them while his children grew up.
But the billionaire philanthropist has once again lifted the lid on his previously extreme work habits, this time examining how much rest he got as a budding entrepreneur.
Gates often compared his employees to one another, and himself to his peers, it seems. The man worth $133 billion previously wrote on his blog that in the early days of Microsoft, his private office would overlook the parking lot—which he would watch over to see which employees left the latest.
But in his new podcast, Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates, alongside guests comedian Seth Rogen and Rogen’s wife, Lauren Miller Rogen, Gates revealed he had once ranked himself against others in terms of how much time he had had seemingly wasted by sleeping.
“In my thirties and forties when there would be a conversation about sleep it would be like ‘Oh,, I only sleep six hours,'” Gates told the couple. “And the other guy says ‘Oh, I only sleep five,’ then ‘Well, sometimes I don’t sleep at all.’
“I’d be like ‘Wow, those guys are so good, I have to try harder because sleep is laziness and unnecessary.”
Gates continued: “Now what we know is that to maintain good brain health, getting good sleep—even back to your teen years—is super important. It’s one of the most predictive measures of any dementia, including Alzheimer’s.”
A fascination with brain health
Gates was speaking to the acting duo on the topic of Alzheimer’s following the death of Gates’ father and Miller Rogen’s mother.
Bill Gates Sr. died at home in September 2020 after a battle with Alzheimer’s, which had begun more than a decade prior.
Gates shared insight into the “stigma” around the neurodegenerative disease, saying: “There’s both lack of awareness and stigma.
“In my dad’s case they never really, until pretty late, said it was Alzheimer’s although it had all the unique characteristics because sadly since there isn’t much in the way of treatment; actually making the formal diagnosis isn’t like you magically say ‘Oh, take this antibiotic and it’ll get cured.'”
The tech titan said although he hoped to see the development of drugs to combat the progressive disease over the next decade or so, people across the age spectrum should be encouraged to explore brain health exercises in the meantime.
He was echoed by Miller Rogen, whose mother Adele Miller developed early-onset Alzheimer’s disease at just 55 years old, and died aged 69 in 2020.
Miller Rogen and her husband launched Hilarity for Charity in 2012, a national nonprofit aiming to care for families impacted by Alzheimer’s disease.
Discussing preventative measures to combat the disease, Gates revealed he had “swung” from actively getting as little sleep as possible to monitoring his rest.
In fact he even “competes” with family and friends, asking: “Who got a 90? How the heck did you do that?”
Rogen added: “When I was young the convention was ‘You’ll sleep when you’re dead, sleep isn’t that important, you don’t need sleep.’ And now already we know that’s completely oppositional to the truth and if anything it’s maybe the single most important thing you can do to keep your brain healthy.”