Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said during a speech that he wished he had discovered the importance of work-life balance years ago. 

Speaking at a Northern Arizona University (NAU) commencement ceremony Saturday, Gates told the graduating class that during his early days at Microsoft, he didn’t believe in taking vacation days or having weekends off, noting that he used to keep track of employees who would leave early or stay late. 

“But as I got older — and especially once I became a father — I realized there is more to life than work,” Gates said during his commencement speech. “Don’t wait as long as I did to learn this lesson. Take time to nurture your relationships, to celebrate your successes, and to recover from your losses.”

“Take a break when you need to,” Gates added. “Take it easy on the people around you when they need it, too.”

Gates also encouraged the graduating class to live in the moment and “have some fun,” adding in his speech that what they are currently doing right now won’t impact their future  (The Hill).

Question: What is this message to students—take a break when you need to? How do you feel about this?

Answer: It means spending more time on creativity. Because if you bury yourself in work, you will not be able to give your brain, yourself, and your thoughts a creative direction.

A creative person should live by absorbing from the air, from the environment, from something that is not simple mechanical work with effort. He should be free, as creative intellectuals have always lived in general.

Comment: That is, the rest itself, even when you walk through the forest and it is a rest on the one hand, on the other hand, it is work.

My Response: Creativity. Of course.

Question: Do you completely agree with him?

Answer: He speaks correctly. A creative person should be free. Otherwise, he will not invent anything and will not give movement, an impetus to progress.

Question: What if we translate this to education, to children? A school that is based on homework, on coming to the blackboard and giving answers: “Tell me what you did at home.” And so on, and so on. If that is all, do you think, it does not prepare creativity?

Answer: It trains technicians who can work, calculate, and do something, but they will not have creative spurts.

Question: So, you are for the formula of creativity. Is it possible to bring everyone to this formula?

Answer: I think that it is possible. Especially since from our time and onward, the period of humanity’s development in the direction of creativity begins. We will see less and less production and more and more of those who work at a level above production.

Question: Are you saying that creativity is inherent to almost every person?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Why? How did they place this point of creativity into us from above?

Answer: So that we express more what is characteristic of a person, not a machine, not a beast, and so on.

Question: So, if we see that a person has resigned himself to mechanical work, does it mean that he has not found this point in himself?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Does it exist in him?

Answer: It is there. Maybe he is looking for it, but it has not been revealed yet. Therefore, he has to do or chooses to do mechanical work. Maybe it helps him, it organizes his thoughts somehow.

Question: Do you think every person should look for this point in themselves?

Answer: I think that if a person has the right inner attitude, he will come to this.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/8/23

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