Melinda French Gates has urged people to practise Melinda French Gates self-care daily, saying that putting down your phone and taking just ten minutes of quiet time can improve both wellbeing and performance in other areas of life.
The philanthropist and author made the call in her book The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward, a New York Times Bestseller published in 2025. The book draws on her life lessons after turning 60, her divorce from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and advice on navigating difficult transitions.
“I want to tell everyone to take time in quiet,” she told Forbes. Whether that means meditation, jogging, or another form of wellness, she said the practice matters.
Melinda French Gates self-care lessons from motherhood
French Gates said she first recognised the value of self-care during her years raising three children, fitting it into the gaps left by carpools and nap times. She admitted she was reluctant at first, particularly when her children were young and needed her constantly.
Eventually, she said, she realised that time for herself made her a better mother, not a less attentive one.
Her youngest daughter, Phoebe Gates, founded the AI shopping app Phia last year. French Gates shares her three children with Bill Gates; the couple divorced in 2021 after 27 years of marriage.
In The Next Day, she described the separation as one of her life’s most difficult transitions. It was precisely in those moments, she argued, that self-care becomes most necessary.
“Don’t just leave and then jump to the next thing,” she said. “Take some time on the next day, the day after what you thought was the transition, to really think and feel and learn, because there’s so much growth that can come in a transition.”
Discomfort, she added, is a sign of growth, and people should embrace it rather than avoid it.
From Gates Foundation to Pivotal Ventures
French Gates has been putting her own advice into practice. She departed the Gates Foundation last June and refocused her professional efforts on Pivotal Ventures, her investment and incubation company, which she founded in 2015, according to GeekWire.
She has described balancing philanthropy, advocacy for reproductive rights, motherhood, writing, and entrepreneurship as requiring the deliberate abandonment of perfectionism.
“When transitions come, and they will come, we need to be ready to spend a bit of time in the clearings in our lives they create,” she wrote in the book.
Work-life balance a growing priority
French Gates is not alone in flagging wellness as a business concern. Work-life balance is the top factor employees consider when applying for jobs, above salary, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, which also links mental wellbeing to physical health outcomes.
Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, wrote in a 2023 LinkedIn post that maintaining work-life balance over a three-decade career had kept him “sane.” Jason McGowan, co-founder of cookie chain Crumbl, told Fortune this month that balance creates meaningful moments within a company; all Crumbl stores close on Sundays for family time.
By contrast, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told Gemini employees in an internal memo that 60-hour, 12-hours-per-weekday working is the “sweet spot” for productivity.
The Next Day is available now, with French Gates continuing to speak on the themes of transition and self-care as she reshapes her career through Pivotal Ventures.
