ChuckOp's eXPeriences

Commentary on software design, development and management - plus much more.

Bill Gates' Think Week - An inside view

Robert Guth of the Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article on Bill Gates’ twice-yearly solo retreats, known inside the company as “Think Week”.

During Think Week, Bill goes off by himself to small cottage armed with a collection of ideas from Microsoft employees in the form of research papers.  I remember my boss at Microsoft asking me to submit my own papers a few times, but I don’t recall that I ever did.  However, I remember reviewing material that my team was sending.

I’ve always loved the idea of a Think Week, so much so that I called a brief trip last August to a friend’s cabin my “Think Week-end”.

Does anyone do a solo vacation, without family or friends – to catch up on reading or just to think?

Comments

Jason Haley said:

I have been doing what I call a "Think and Motivate Week" the past three years. Of course I am not Bill Gates so I don't have the ability to get away and be all by myself and I don't run Microsoft ... so mine are a little bit different.

This last one I blogged about a little at these links: http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/jhaley/archive/2004/12/24/38836.aspx and http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/jhaley/archive/2005/01/02/40575.aspx

I try and spend as much time alone that week to focus on the list of items I put together for that week. Usually the topics have to do with goals I want to achieve in some way (since I don't run a company the goals have to do with me instead of a company).
# March 30, 2005 6:10 AM

TrackBack said:

^_^,Pretty Good!
# April 15, 2005 1:19 PM
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