Melinda French Gates first realized the importance of self-care in early motherhood. In between carpools, when her three kids were napping, and early in the morning, she recognized that she needed time to herself—to allow herself to breathe.
French Gates stressed the importance of self-care in her second book The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward. Published in 2025, it explores the philanthropist’s life lessons after her 60th birthday, takeaways from her divorce to Bill Gates, and advice on difficult transitions.
“I want to tell everyone to take time in quiet,” she told Forbes last year.
French Gates offered one key piece of advice: to put down your phone and take 10 minutes a day to practice self-care, whether that be meditation, jogging or other avenues for wellness.
She recalled being reluctant to practice wellness during her motherhood years, especially when her kids were young and needed her attention often. However, eventually she realized that dedicating time to her own self-care could improve not only her well being, but it also helped her be a better mother.
French Gates shares three children with Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. Her youngest daughter, Phoebe Gates, founded the trending AI shopping app Phia last year. Bill and Melinda got divorced in 2021 after 27 years of marriage.
In The Next Day, French Gates called the separation one of her life’s most difficult transitions. And when major transitions occur, French Gates emphasized the importance of taking time for self-care.
“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.”
In fact, being uncomfortable means you’re actually growing, she added, urging people to embrace that rather than being afraid of it.
Mental health and work-life balance
Research says mental health and wellbeing are integral to quality of life and even physical health. Taking time to practice gratitude, eating healthy, prioritizing sleep, and staying connected to peers are all ways that one can boost wellbeing, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Work-life balance is the number one factor employees look for when applying to jobs, even trumping a higher paycheck. An increasing number of CEOs have also been emphasizing work-life balance in their offices, citing it as a key factor in maintaining mental health.
Marc Randolph, cofounder of Netflix, claimed that maintaining work-life balance throughout his three-decade-long career has kept him “sane,” he wrote in a 2023 Linkedin post.
Jason McGowan, cofounder of the Utah cookie giant Crumbl, told Fortune’s Preston Fore this month that work-life balance helps create meaningful moments in a company. All Crumbl stores are closed on Sundays so that all employees can enjoy family time.
On the other hand, this approach contrasts how many Silicon Valley tech companies operate.
Google cofounder Sergey Brin swears by 60-hour work weeks. He told Google Gemini employees in an internal memo that working for 12 hours per weekday is the “sweet spot” for productivity.
French Gates argued balancing philanthropy, advocacy for reproductive rights, motherhood, writing, and entrepreneurship means ditching perfectionism. Letting go of that inner mental voice that wants to control every detail is key to success in times of crisis.
“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 explained in the book. “After all, transitions are disruptive and disorienting. They lay waste to all our careful planning and force us to question our assumptions, our ambitions, even our very identities. But that, I’ve come to understand, is part of their magic.”
