Almost every day, Michael Bloomberg spends an hour and a half doing something that has nothing to do with his financial information empire, his work with the UN, or his philanthropic foundation. 

He has a Spanish lesson at his office with a private instructor, sometimes in person but mostly on a video call, especially if travelling. Convinced that the day you stop learning is the day you start dying, the 83-year-old billionaire, has now been doing this for close to a quarter of a century. 

For most of that time, over on the other side of the Atlantic, Sir Tim Martin was doing much the same thing. The founder of Britain’s Wetherspoon pub empire had every Wednesday from 3.45pm to 5.15pm blocked off in his diary so he could head to the Berlitz language school in central London for a French lesson.