Skip to main content

Help Mark Zuckerberg decide what his 2015 personal challenge will be

Help Mark Zuckerberg decide what his 2015 personal challenge will be

Share this story

Mark Zuckerberg’s New Year’s resolutions are pretty legendary. The Facebook founder and chief executive is famous for setting himself a "personal challenge" every year, from only eating meat from animals he’s killed himself in 2011 to wearing a tie every day in 2009. In 2010, he even set himself the task of learning Mandarin, a goal that came to fruition rather publicly when he conducted a Q&A in the language in Beijing this year. Of course, not everyone was impressed by his accent, but how many languages have you learned lately?

"I have an idea of what my next challenge might be, but i'm open to more ideas."

This year, however, Zuckerberg is crowdsourcing ideas for his personal challenge. In a public post on Facebook he explains: "For background, every year I take on a challenge to broaden my perspective and learn something about the world beyond my work at Facebook." He then lists some previous challenges —including "Writing a thank you note each day to someone who made the world better" — and says he was inspired to throw 2015’s challenge out to his users after being asked about it at a recent public Q&A (part of Facebook’s attempt to get more feedback from the community). "I have an idea of what my next challenge might be," he writes, "but I'm open to more ideas before the new year officially begins. So share your ideas here!"

Some popular suggestions on the site include reading a new book every month chosen by someone else (Zuckerberg: "I really like this idea."), running a mile every day "rain or shine," and learning to play an instrument ("Great idea. I learned how to play guitar a while back but I could definitely improve.") However, we thought we'd give Zuckerberg a bit of a signal boost and see what you, our Verge readers, could come up with. We've started the ball rolling with some suggestions of our own below — feel free to add yours in the comments below!

Poll

What should Zuckerberg's personal challenge be in 2015?

This poll is closed

  • 7%
    Run a mile every day come rain or shine
    (322 votes)
  • 8%
    Read a book each month chosen by someone else
    (358 votes)
  • 35%
    Complete his Harvard degree
    (1506 votes)
  • 3%
    Write a love song about you based on your private messages
    (123 votes)
  • 16%
    Legally change his name to "Suckerberg"
    (674 votes)
  • 2%
    Roughhouse with a stranger every day
    (92 votes)
  • 12%
    Let Andy Samberg run Facebook for the year
    (512 votes)
  • 11%
    Ramble the streets of San Francisco naked, stopping strangers to tell them about his likes, interests, and recently completed holidays
    (473 votes)
  • 3%
    Learn how to Christ Air
    (134 votes)
  • 3%
    Other (add to comments below)
    (145 votes)
4339 votes total