Tech How Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg uses New Year's resolutions to improve himself

Even when you're the billionaire CEO of Facebook, you have room for personal growth.
Mark Zuckerberg made his first public New Year's resolution in 2009, when the economy tanked and Facebook wasn't profitable.
Since then, he's made all sorts of resolutions, like learning a new language and meeting new people.
The full list of his resolutions serves as a reminder that it's not too late for anyone to make one of their own.

Every year since 2009, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has challenged himself to broaden his perspective "and learn something about the world beyond my work at Facebook," he once explained.

His tool of choice? A New Year's resolution.

Zuckerberg on Thursday announced his 2018 resolution — and this time, it's focused on his job.

This year, he wants to fix Facebook's hardest problem: He wants to end the abuse of the platform, whether through election-interference efforts, fake news, or other nefarious practices.

His resolution last year, to meet someone from every US state, was made after the 2016 presidential campaign, during which many people accused Facebook of having a role in the nation's divided political discourse.

That resolution took Zuckerberg on a tour of the country that included visiting the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white supremacist killed nine black worshippers in 2015. He met people recovering from opioid addiction in Dayton, Ohio, and hung out with a dairy farmer in Blanchardville, Wisconsin.

His first resolution, in 2009, was also focused on his job: wear a tie every day.

"That first year the economy was in a deep recession and Facebook was not yet profitable," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday. "We needed to get serious about making sure Facebook had a sustainable business model. It was a serious year, and I wore a tie every day as a reminder."

But many of his resolutions focused more on personal growth - the kind of resolutions that any of us might make. Here's the full list, in case you need inspiration to take on a New Year's resolution of your own:

2009: Wear tie daily
2010: Learn Mandarin
2011: Be a vegetarian or only eat meat if he killed the animal himself.
2012: Code daily
2013: Meet a non-Facebook person every day
2014: Write a thank-you note daily
2015: Read a book every two weeks
2016: Build an artificial intelligent app for his home and run 365 miles
2017: Meet someone from every state
2018: Focus on fixing Facebook's abuse problems.
2019: Hold public debates on the effects of technology on society. etc.
2020: No more public disclosures of annual goals but more focus on long-term projects.