Giving Compass' Take:

• Bill Gates goes over impactful lessons he has learned and the measure of success he has taken from his experiences and his inspiration that came from fellow businessman philanthropist Warren Buffett. 

• How can other HNW donors learn from both these inspiring men's words of wisdom? How can starting entrepreneurs take a note as well?

• Here's an example on how Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are taking their words into action. 

On his blog titled GatesNotes, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates posted a New Year's entry titled “What I learned at work this year,” where he recounted his year and asked himself the deepest of questions about his life.

He wrote:

One thing that occurs to me is that the questions I am asking myself at age 63 are very different from the ones I would have asked when I was in my 20s.

Back then, an end-of-year assessment would amount to just one question: Is Microsoft software making the personal-computing dream come true?

Today of course I still assess the quality of my work. But I also ask myself a whole other set of questions about my life. Did I devote enough time to my family? Did I learn enough new things Did I develop new friendships and deepen old ones? These would have been laughable to me when I was 25, but as I get older, they are much more meaningful.

To answer his own questions, he revealed his ultimate measure of success, learned from fellow magnate Warren Buffett: “Do the people you care about love you back?"

Read the full article about Bill Gates inspiration from Warren Buffett by Zeynep Yenisey at Maxim