In the early 1980s I came in contact with my first computer.

One day, while living in Berlin, Germany, my father brought home a Tandy TRS-80.

We wired the TRS-80 to our black and white television.

The television we had back then had two dials on the front of the TV.

On dial was for UHF and one dial was for VHF.

To this day I don’t know what UHF or VHF mean.

As I remember it while living in Germany, our family only had access to one channel, ABC.

I remember watching The Wonderful World of Disney.

I remember from time to time, I would see Walt Disney on The Wonderful World of Disney.

These had to be reruns, as Disney passed away in 1996.

In addition to the TRS-80 computer my father purchased a cassette tape.

The cassette tape contained the computer code for various computer programs we were able to run on the TRS-80.

The computer was a lot of fun to play with.

After my father finished up his Army assignment in Berlin, we were stationed to Fort Bragg, NC.

I attended Albritton Middle School on Fort Bragg.

Albritton was newly built before I attended the school.  It was very modern.

The outside of the school was brick with a maroon roof.

I enjoyed my time at Albritton.

While I was at Albritton, we had a class where we went to the computer lab.

That is where I first got my exposure to Apple computers.

I was probably part of the first school program that had Apple IIE computers.

I remember writing a computer program from a manual that drew a colored picture on the computer screen.

I really had a wonderful time playing on the computer.

Little did I know in the 1980s how integral computers would become in my life.

For most of Bill Gates has consistently been ranked as the Richest Man in the World.

This weekend, I started watching a show on Netflix called Inside Bill’s Brain.

This is a three part series that shares different aspect of the life Bill & Melinda Gates have built.

It’s pretty remarkable the second act that Bill & Melinda are having.

I suspect that the work they currently doing will be responsible for saving more lives in the world.

During the special, Melinda shares that she read an article where 12% of the child population under age five die of diarrhea.

12% equals 2,195 children that die every single day.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, diarrheal diseases are the second leading cause of death for children under the age of five.

Melinda became deeply disturbed when she read about this sad state affairs.

She stated that if her child got diarrhea she would just go to the store and buy some medicine to cure the condition.

I was touched as she questioned, “How in the world where we have so could something so easily prevented and cured be responsible for so much suffering and death?”

However, for much of the world’s population, buying the medicine is not a viable treatment.

Almost 2,200 children die every day from a condition that is easily treatable and cured.

One of the major initiates Bill & Melinda Gates are working on is a way to find a way to prevent the spread of these diseases.

I remember watching a television show where Bill Gates was a member of a panel.

The audience applauded him for his philanthropic work now that he is no longer actively involved in day to day operations at Microsoft.

Someone from the audience asked him how much more fulfilling the work he was doing now compared to the work he did with Microsoft.

Bill the shared that he loved the work he did at Microsoft because his work at Microsoft changed the world in its own right.

I’ve been fascinated as I’ve been watching Inside Bill’s Mind.

Here are the three lessons I’ve learned from Bill Gates.

When asked what his greatest fear was, Bill Gates replied, “That my mind will stop working.”

Time is Precious.

Bill is still working full time in his foundation.

Just like everyone else, Bill Gates only has twenty-four hours each day.

He is constantly in meetings to move his work forward.

Whenever he attends a meeting he is always on time. Never late.

He Only Does Work That Makes Sense For Him To Do.

During one of the episodes, his assistant is showing us a weekly routine where she places a number of books into his bag.

These are the books he will read this week.

Next week, his assistant will give him new books to ready.

Putting books in a bag is something Bill could easily do.

However, putting books in a bag is not the best use of Bill Gates time.

A better use of his time is reading the books.

Failure Is Part Of The Process

One of the major issues Bill & Melinda Gates are working on is solving the problem of sanitation for much of the world’s population.

In America, sanitation is not an issue.  However, for much of the world, safe sewage disposal is nonexistent.

And the result is spreading of diseases that are easily presented.

Did I mention that almost 2,200 children die every day from diarrhea?

The main cause of diarrhea is related to lack of safe sewage disposal.

Currently, there is not a financially viable way to provide sanitation for impoverished countries.

Bill Gates stated we need 1,000 wild ideas to solve the sanitation problem.

He’s created a contest to get the world’s greatest minds to solve the sanitation problem in a way that is cost effective to deploy in third world countries.

Hopefully, one of the 1,000 wild ideas will be the solution to the sanitation problem.

That will mean there well be many failures.

Which is OK, the failures are don’t matter once the solution is found.

There are the tree lessons I’ve learned from Bill Gates.

1. Time is precious.

2. Only do work that makes sense for me to do.

3. Accept that going through failure is the only to get to success.