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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Source Code summary
Bill Gates
My Beginnings
25 mins
Brief summary
Source Code offers insights into the technological advancements and future possibilities led by Bill Gates. It covers innovation, the role of technology in solving global issues, and Gates' vision for a connected world.
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Source Code
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Planting seeds for the future
In the Gates household, games weren’t just a pastime – they were a proving ground. Especially card games. And the reigning champion was the family’s maternal grandmother, Adelle Thompson, known to the family as ‘Gami’.
As a kid, Bill Gates believed his grandma possessed some sort of magical abilities when it came to games. She never lost, no matter how many times they played. But then, one evening, Gami revealed her secret powers. She had an uncanny ability to track every move on the table – to spot patterns and predict plays. Bill was in awe as she calmly pointed out which of his cards should be played next.
He suddenly realized: her winning streak wasn’t luck – it was strategy. She had trained her mind to see the game differently. And if she could do it, so could he. From that moment on, he studied her every move, treating each game as a lesson. It took years of losing, but eventually, he started winning.
That hunger to figure things out – to crack the code behind skill and mastery – stuck with him. It shaped his approach to school, where he gravitated toward subjects that challenged him, like math and reading. He liked the concrete nature of numbers and arithmetic, whereas he struggled to engage with anything that felt routine or irrelevant. Simply put: when something caught his interest, he dove in completely, often rocking back and forth with intense concentration. When it didn’t, he tuned it out.
For a long time, perhaps for this very reason, school was difficult for Bill. He was also younger than most of his classmates, scrawny, and had a high-pitched voice – all of which made him a prime target for bullies. He tried to compensate for all this by becoming a prankster – a class clown – which didn’t help his grades at all.
His mother, Mary, struggled with the ups and downs of Bill’s performance at school. She had a subtle way of reinforcing her high expectations. If any of the Gate’s children, which included his older sister Kristi and younger sister Libby, were struggling in school, she would mention it with such dramatic disappointment that the message was clear – don’t be that kid.
Both his mother and his father, Bill Sr., had built a life that reflected their core values of hard work, community, and ambition. Bill Sr. and Mary had met in college, married in the early '50s, and settled in Seattle, where his father pursued a law career while his mother dedicated herself to volunteer work.
Their home in View Ridge was part of a rapidly expanding city. At the heart of that prosperity was the aerospace manufacturer Boeing. The company’s rise paralleled the economic optimism and post-war confidence that was in the air at the time. The 1962 World’s Fair, held in Seattle, captured that spirit – bold, futuristic, and full of possibility. The Gate’s family attended the fair, which was full of the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs. And even though seven-year-old Bill was more excited about rides, the fair’s promise of a future driven by innovation surely planted a seed.
At home, conversations at the dinner table often revolved around his parents’ work – his father’s cases, his mother’s fundraising efforts, discussions about fairness, responsibility, and being a “good steward.” These were more than ideas, they were a way of life. And Bill and his sisters weren’t sheltered from the adult conversations. When their parents had friends over, the kids were expected to engage.
Looking back, it’s clear that all of these influences – Gami’s strategic competitiveness, his mother’s high expectations, and the energy of a growing Seattle – shaped the way he saw the world. Games, school, and even everyday interactions weren’t just experiences; they were puzzles to be solved, patterns to be mastered. That mindset, the belief that anything could be figured out with enough focus and effort, would stay with him for the rest of his life.
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What is Source Code about?
Source Code (2025) takes you inside Bill Gates’s journey – from writing his first lines of code to the high-stakes battle to keep Microsoft afloat. Packed with ambition and innovation, this memoir offers a rare glimpse into the defining moments that shaped both Gates and the future of technology.
Who should read Source Code?
- Tech enthusiasts and programmers
- Entrepreneurs and business leaders
- Fans of biographies and memoirs
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