Bill Gates is a Genius

This post is gonna have spoilers so if you haven't seen episode one of Inside Bill's Brain, you should definitely go watch it.

I recently started watching Inside Bill's Brain with my wife, Ashley.

It's a very good show.

After watching episode one I'm amazed at just how successful he is.

One theory as to why comes from Malcom Gladwell's book, Outliers.

This is the book where the 10,000 hour rule comes from. It says that in order to be a master at anything, you need to devote at least 10,000 hours to it.

Bill Gates is one of the examples Gladwell uses to prove his point. He says that Gates became so successful at such a young age because his mom got him access to a computer early in his life, which allowed him to program a ton.

He makes a pretty convincing case, and I think there's something to that 10,000 hour rule.

However, after watching this show, it's pretty clear to me there's more to Bill Gates than his 10,000+ hours of computer time.

One Dartmouth study shows that some people get more of a dopamine hit from learning than others.

This could explain why Gates was always in his room reading. He was probably high out of his mind off dopamine.

If he was getting more dopamine at a young age while reading, it means he probably practiced reading more, which would explain why he can read 150 pages an hour by now.

But there's more to reading than just seeing characters on a page.

When we read, we think about what we're reading. We synthesize that information and it connects to other things we know.

If his brain spent more time per day synthesizing information because of the dopamine hits he was getting from learning, it would explain why he's able to do it so quickly now.

So yes, he is this way because he's spent over 10,000 hours flexing his brain, but if the Dartmouth study applies here, it might mean the reason why he got all that practice in the first place was because something about the way he was wired made him want more.

Ultimately, the way he was born made him more likely to put in his 10,000 hours.