Bill Gates and Melinda Gates like to meditate weekly

Bill and Melinda Gates
Ted
S. Warren/AP

• In a
  recent blog post, Bill Gates said he and his wife, Melinda,
  enjoy meditating together.
• Gates was inspired to meditate after reading the work of Andy
  Puddicombe, the co-founder of the popular meditation app
  Headspace.
• While Gates once dismissed the practice, he now sees it as an
  important tool for improving his focus.

Bill Gates once gave up all TV and music in an attempt to improve his focus. Now he
meditates instead.

In a recent blog post discussing his
favorite books of the year, Gates said that both he and his wife
Melinda enjoy sitting down to meditate — but on comfortable
chairs instead of floor mats. 

“There’s no way I could do the
lotus position,” he said.

Read more:

5 successful business leaders that have used meditation to
improve productivity, creativity, and business
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The Microsoft founder was first
inspired to meditate after discovering Headspace, an app that offers
guided practices, animations, articles, and
videos.

The app’s co-founder, Andy Puddicombe, recently authored one of Gates’
favorite new titles: The Headspace Guide to Meditation and
Mindfulness.

Puddicombe is an ordained
Buddhist monk, who left the monastic life to become a circus
clown in London. While there, he taught meditation exercises to
people with severe anxiety. His experience prompted him to
co-found an app that would bring meditation to the entire world —
including Gates. 

Bill
Gates with his daughter, Jennifer, and his wife,
Melinda.
Yana Paskova/Getty
Images

After years of dismissing meditation as “a woo-woo thing tied somehow to
reincarnation,” Gates began to recognize the legitimacy of the
practice. 

He called up Puddicombe and asked
him to spend a day and a half at the Gates household, where Bill,
Melinda, and their children learned many of the same exercises
found on the Headspace app.

These days, Gates meditates two
or three times a week, with each session lasting about ten
minutes. 

“For me, it has nothing to do
with faith or mysticism,” he wrote. “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.”

There’s research to back this up.
Numerous
studies have suggested that meditation can lower stress and
improve focus. The practice has also been linked to sharper
memories,
decreased blood pressure, and
higher relationship satisfaction. 

Though Gates isn’t sure it would have changed his early days at
Microsoft, he said meditation is much-needed now that he has
three children and a vast scope
of
professional and personal endeavors.

“I now see that meditation is
simply exercise for the mind, similar to the way we exercise our
muscles when we play sports,” he wrote.”I like what I’m getting
from my ten minutes every few days.”