There is 1 ultimate measure of a successful life, according to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and it has nothing to do with money

Nati Harnik/AP

Warren Buffett (R) and Bill Gates.

• Bill Gates said he measures success differently today than when he was in his early 20s.
• Gates said he learned from Warren Buffett to measure success by the strength of his personal relationships, as opposed to professional or financial milestones.
• "His measure of success is, 'Do the people you care about love you back?'" Gates said. "I think that is about as good a metric as you will find."

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are two of the richest people in the world, with a combined net worth of more than $170 billion.

But when it comes to defining success, money has nothing to do with it.

Gates said on Saturday that Buffett has helped him to define success by the strength of one's personal relationships.

"His measure of success is, 'Do the people you care about love you back?'" Gates wrote in a blog post. "I think that is about as good a metric as you will find."

That contrasts with how Gates measured success when he was in his early 20s, after he dropped out of Harvard to launch Microsoft with Paul Allen.

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Back then, Gates wrote, "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," the 63-year-old Gates said. "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?"

He continued: "These would have been laughable to me when I was 25, but as I get older, they are much more meaningful."

Read Gates' full post »

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