Bill Gates Says Autistic Traits Helped Him Co-Found Microsoft: ‘Deep Concentration Became a Strength'

Bill Gates Says Autistic Traits Helped Him Co-Found Microsoft: In an interview a few weeks ago, Microsoft founder Gates stated that today he would be diagnosed as autistic if he were a child. The billionaire remarked that back in the day, autism had a very narrow definition, and he associated some traits of his childhood with today's accepted norms.

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In an interaction with Wall Street Journal, Gates said, “This whole thing of Asperger's or on the spectrum is a fairly new thing, you know? It used to be autism had a fairly narrow definition that was you know clearly identifiable,”

"But this idea that if you're slow socializing — you know, I have a behavior where I rock that bothers people, but that's also common so-called self-esteeming type thing. So I realized, wow, there's a bit of a pattern match there," Gates added.

As per World Health Organization, autism spectrum disorder is a broad term representing disorders characterized by difficulties in social interaction and communication. Autistic spectrum disorder is estimated to affect about 1 out of 100 children worldwide and 1 out of 36 in the USA.

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Bill Gates on impact of his non-standard childhood behaviour:

However, the 69-year-old does not think that these limitations in childhood negatively affected him. Gates went on to say that these so-called malignant quirks helped him build in himself the deep focus and concentration needed to thrive in mathematics, sciences, and later in programming.

"Looking back on that, because I didn't behave in a standard way, and yet, you know, that deep concentration that got applied to math and science and eventually to all those programming experiences I had, that became a strength," Gates noted.

Gates' life story, "Source Code", chronicling the progress of a young boy in founding one of the world's largest companies on February 4, will launch. This book starts with Gates' boyhood days and finishes in the late 1970s, when the software company partnered with Apple.

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