Mark Zuckerberg gives up on doing personal ‘yearly challenges’

Giving up? Now that’s a resolution the common person can get behind. 

Facebook CEO and laser enthusiast Mark Zuckerberg has a decade-long tradition of setting a yearly “personal challenge” for himself. And while they’ve frequently been, well, a bit odd, this year he’s going in a different direction. Specifically, Zuckerberg announced today that he’s abandoning the very concept of a yearly personal challenge. 

Which, hell yeah, why not I guess?

“Every new year of the last decade I set a personal challenge,” wrote Zuckerberg. “… This decade I’m going to take a longer term focus. Rather than having year-to-year challenges, I’ve tried to think about what I hope the world and my life will look in 2030 so I can make sure I’m focusing on those  things.” 

This New Year’s resolution of giving up on New Year’s resolutions runs in contrast to his more actionable personal challenges of years past. In 2019, Zuckerberg said he would participate in a bunch of “public discussions” about Facebook. The year before, he said he would fix a broken Facebook (how did that one turn out?). And in 2017, he excitedly wrote about meeting people in every state in the U.S.

Oh yeah, and in 2016, he said he’d build a digital butler. 

While all those previous resolutions have the unfortunate commonality of requiring Zuckerberg to actually do something, he has now set himself up for a chill decade of thinking and “focusing.” We imagine his giant chunk of land in Hawaii is rather conducive to that. 

To be clear, Zuckerberg’s Facebook post was more than just a relatable admission that resolving to better oneself is, like, totally a waste of time man — especially when everyone knows you’re just going to be back on your bullshit sooner or later.

It also included bold musings about the future and cutting insights about the present day. To wit: Augmented reality is the next major computing platform; housing costs are too expensive; and millennials will bring about societal change.  

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We can hardly wait. Now, excuse me while I make good on my New Year’s resolution of no longer taking this smoked meats fan seriously.