Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg takes on a personal challenge to learn new things and grow outside of his work at Facebook.
In the last few years, his personal challenges were:
2009 - Wear tie every day
Why? Because in 2009, Facebook was just about to take over the world. In order to win the respect of others and to show his professionalism, he encouraged himself to put on tie every day. It was also to demonstrate his seriousness towards every single day.And we all know that he's pretty much a "grayish" effective guy. Just check out his wardrobe below:
2010 - Learn Chinese Language
Mark Zuckerberg realized that more and more people are using Chinese language. And in order to explore China market and also to blend it better into his Chinese-descent's wife's life and culture, he was determined to learn and master the language. In fact, in 2015, he gave a speech in a Beijing University purely in Mandarin Chinese language.
2011 - Eat only animals killed by his own hands
Mark Zuckerberg said, "I am grateful for the food that I eat. Many people have forgotten that when we eat meat, many live animals were killed. And my goal is to let me not to forget this."
2012 - Write programming every day
In the early days of Facebook, Mark Zuckerbery wrote almost all the programming. But after he has become a boss, there hasn't been much time to do programming anymore. Through this personal challenge, Mark wanted to connect once again to the ever changing programming world.
2013 - Meet someone new outside of Facebook office
His purpose is to learn new things from different people with different personalities from various background and industry. His purpose was to enlarge his horizon and improve his communications skills.
2014 - Write a thank-you letter every day
Give thanks and be grateful is a beautiful virtue. And if he can discover areas of another person to be thankful for, this means he can see the strength of the other person. And through this process, Mark said that he can grow as a person.
2015 - Read a book every 2 weeks
Mark mentioned that books will allow him to have a curious mind, to discover a particular topics in depth. Therefore, he spent less time on multi media but more on reading books on culture, history, science etc that can help him to grow.
2016 - To build a simple AI
Mark Zuckerberg said, "I want to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work." And the theme for 2016 is INVENTION.
In fact, Mark also has another smaller challenge -which is to run 365 km in 2016, which is about 1 km a day.
How about my personal challenge 2016?
Mark Zuckerberg's boldness and aggressiveness in setting his personal challenge really opens up my eyes. He is not afraid to fail. And whatever he sets out to do, he makes sure he delivers and achieves it.
What amazes me is also unlike others (myself included) with a long laundry list of what to do (i.e. new year's resolution), Mark only focuses on 1 major life-changing personal challenge.
This is what I admired about Mark.
Ok - back to my personal challenge 2016.....
Family First
With the sudden passing away of my mother in Dec 2015 and me having to take care of my 92 year-old dad, I would say my personal challenge in 2016 would be to focus on FAMILY first - with taking care of my ageing dad is top priority.
Write 100 articles in my blog
Additionally, I would like to continue to write my blog to inspire others and to jot down things matter most to me. And I am committed to write minimum 100 articles / posts in 2016 (average 2 posts per week).
Of course I wanted to be like Mark, setting running 365 km (writing 365 posts) in a year. But i believe it's a bit over stretched for me. Even writing 100 articles - is already a tough challenge.
Besides writing about sports (running, swimming, cycling etc), I would also write about my mom and dad and any other topics that touches my heart.
Work on a book on Dad and Mom's stories.
Deep inside my heart I wanted to write a book one day. But I also know my English is lowsy and limited - not even qualified to be a writer. But we shall see if I can write a book out of love for my parents.
How about your personal challenge 2016?
If you haven't set any personal challenge this year yer, please try not to give a long laundry list or not specific enough.
Let's learn together from Mark Zuckergerg to set BIG and IMPACTFUL PERSONAL CHALLENGE.
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