On the whole, the world is getting better, writes Bill Gates, Time Magazine’s first-ever guest editor.

“To some extent, it is good that bad news gets attention,” he writes. “If you want to improve the world, you need something to be mad about. But it has to be balanced by upsides. When you see good things happening, you can channel your energy into driving even more progress.”

Bad news arrives as drama while good news is incremental — and not usually deemed newsworthy, he writes.