Melinda Gates likes to do this odd thing to jumpstart her morning routine

Melinda Gates likes to do this odd thing to jumpstart her morning routine Melinda Gates likes to do this odd thing to jumpstart her morning routine Melinda Gates is known as Bill Gates’s wife, but she’s long become equally known as a supporter of women through her various organizations and philanthropies. She fights for women’s rights as the co-head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, funds female entrepreneurs through her investment firm Pivotal Ventures, and donates billions a year to charity with her husband. Her new book is “The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World.”She told The Cut about her morning routine â€" it turns out she’s a morning person.“I like to get up around 6:30 a.m., and I spend that first hour in ‘quiet time.’ I do meditation, some stretching, yoga, and I always do some kind of spiritual reading, like Mark Nepo’s  The Book of Awakening. Even if it’s cold here in Seattle, I’ll get outside. I really like to go in the lake when it’s cold outside, or get my feet out in our yard, in our garden. Then I try to have a quick breakfast with my daughter Phoebe, who is a sophomore in high school. I’m from Texas, so about once a week I’ll eat huevos rancheros, which is my all-time favorite. Sometimes I’ll just have a grab-and-go muffin or yogurt, or oatmeal in the winter. Then I’ll go into the office, either at the Foundation or my Pivotal Ventures office.”Gates says she slugs down black coffee but tries to have her final cup by 1 p.m. In the evenings, she has a totally sane “no work after dinner” rule that she made up about four years ago. She told The Cut:“I generally have a couple cups of black coffee in the morning, but I’m 54, so I try to stop having caffeine by 1 p.m. And I love iced tea - I grew up in the South, so I have a lot of good memories of being with my mom after school. She would sit down, even though I was one of four kids, and would make us each a glass of iced tea. We’d sit and talk, and she’d listen to my day. I still have iced tea every day.”You might also enjoy… New neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happy Strangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds 10 lessons from Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule that will double your productivity The worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs 10 habits of mentally strong people