They asked Bill Gates and Warren Buffett how they would define their success in one word. They did not hesitate: focus

At 94, Warren Buffett Ha “Hang” your investment notebook After more than six decades as one of the brightest and most accurate investors of Wall Street in front of Berkshire Hathaway.

For his part, Bill Gates spent four decades directing Microsoft. Both became Milmillonarios with it and agree that they would never have achieved it if it is not for a key factor: to focus on achieving their goals.

Focus on something and be constant. In one Interview for CNBCBuffett said that on one occasion Bill Gates gathered a group of 20 people – among which Bill Gates was – and asked them to write a word that explained their success on paper. “Bill and I had only seen each other twice and we didn’t know what the other was writing. We both wrote the same word: ‘Focus‘”

Both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett attribute much of their fortune and legacy to their ability to avoid dispersion and keep the course for decades. For them, the approach and the ability to focus on a single objective is not only a skill, but the basis on which their empires built.

While others played, Gates scheduled. As detailed in his autobiographical book ‘Code Source: My beginnings’Adolescent Gates discovered that programming was a creative way of structuring ideas that tests their logical thinking, which made it become obsessed with creating different programs when access to a computer was a scarce resource only reserved for universities and large companies.

Gates and his companions of the “Computer Fourth” of high school managed to get free shared access time to one of those expensive computers and learn to program when very few knew how to do it. This obsession with the software has provided a fortune valued at 112.7 billion dollars, according to Forbes

Start is an advantage. In An interview For Charlie Rose’s program in 2016, Gates said that “what you do obsessively between 13 and 18 years is what is most likely to take you to global success. The only thing I did obsessively between my 13 and 18 was to write software.” According to Buffett, in the same way as Gates He focused on learningHe did it to learn to invest. “He focused on software. I concentrated on investments. Starting very young gave me a great advantage. There is no doubt about it,” said the investor nonagenarian.

According to Times of Indiaat 11 years the “Oracle of Omaha” was already beginning to make his steps in the investments with $ 114.75 that he had saved. With them he bought three actions from the CNIES Service oil and gas company (now called Citgo). Bill Gates became a millionaire at age 20 thanks to the software company he had founded with his secondary school friend Paul Allen. Warren Buffett had to wait until 32 years for his heritage to exceed six figures.

Prioritize and avoid distractions. Having clear priorities has been essential for Gates and Buffet not to waste energies in projects that did not bring them closer to their goals. Bill Gates told to CNBC that He had focused all his life In a single project: Microsoft.

During his first 20 years leading Microsoft, his routine revolved exclusively around software development, sacrificing weekends and vacations to achieve its goal: that each home had a personal computer. In An interview for Vanity FairPaul Allen, co -founder of Microsoft and Gates’s partner in its beginnings in programming, said that “Microsoft was an environment of great stress because Bill directed others as hard as he did with himself.”

Warren Buffett’s strategy: focus and long term. From a young age, Warren Buffett, chose to specialize in long -term investmentsavoiding the temptation to search Quick earnings. Your strategy During all this time it has been based on identifying solid companies, investing in them and maintaining the actions for years or even decades letting the Time and compound interest They would grow their money.

Buffett calls this investment style the “snowball effect”. In the Annual Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Board of 1999Buffett joked with his inverting precocity. “We started building this small snowball at the top of a very long hill. The key is to have a very long hill, either starting very young or living to very old.”

The 94 -year -old veteran investor has met both conditions for Finish your career With the fifth greatest fortune in the world, with a “snowball” valued in 156.6 billion dollars.

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Image | Flickr (Fortune Live Media), Wikimedia Commons (Jennifer Jacquemart)