3 Habits That Helped Mark Zuckerberg Build His $222 Billion Fortune
Written by
Andrew Lisa
Edited by
Levi Leidy
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When he unified far-flung friends online with the launch of Facebook in the mid-2000s, Mark Zuckerberg personified the new generation of ultra-rich corporate powerbrokers. The gray-haired CEO in a suit and tie had been replaced by a baby-faced billionaire in a hoodie with his 25th birthday still in front of him.
Zuckerberg has immutable characteristics, like ambition and intelligence, and niche skills, like coding and tech prowess, which most people can’t manufacture on their own. However, people can control their behaviors — and the Meta CEO has a trio of habits that just about anyone can replicate to live up to their true potential.
While you might never amass a $222 billion fortune, as Forbes estimates Zuckerberg’s net worth to be as of Nov. 30, 2025, you can adopt three of his core habits and find the extra gear that launched him to global prominence.
Eliminate Trivial Choices To Reduce Decision Fatigue
In 2019, Medium reported on the logic behind one of Albert Einstein’s most famous peculiarities — wearing nearly identical clothing every day. For the superstar scientist, it was simple: If he was thinking about insignificant choices like what to wear, then he wasn’t thinking about his work.
That puts Zuckerberg in good company.
In 2014, Business Insider reported on the Meta CEO’s first public Q&A. When one participant asked why he wore blue jeans and a gray T-shirt every day, Zuckerberg responded, “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.”
Wake Up to Something Other Than a Screen
In 2022, Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan on an episode of the podcaster’s eponymous show that he no longer reached for his phone as his first order of business after waking up.
“I wake in the morning, look at my phone, you get like a million messages of stuff that come in, and it’s usually not good,” he told the host. “People reserve the good stuff to tell me in person. It’s almost like you wake up and you’re punched in the stomach.”
For those not running trillion-dollar companies, it might be polarizing politics or negative social media bombardment, but either way, doomscrolling upon opening your eyes is not a productive way to start your day — and the proof is in Zuckerberg’s new morning mentality since dropping the habit.
“Now I need to go reset myself and be able to be productive and not be stressed out about this,” he concluded.
Keep Your Mind and Body Healthy
In 2023, Zuckerberg announced on Facebook that he had won a pair of medals, one gold and one silver, at his first Brazilian jiu jitsu tournament — and BJJ is hardly the social media pioneer’s only challenging extracurricular activity.
Reporting on his martial arts achievements, CNN noted that Zuckerberg also learned enough Chinese to give a 20-minute speech in Mandarin at a Beijing university and hunts all the meat that he eats himself.
Unfamiliar and difficult undertakings can be intimidating — and for Zuckerberg, that’s exactly the point because he knows that failing must precede winning.
In 2023, he said on Lex Fridman’s podcast, “Maybe to some degree, your ability to keep doing interesting things is your willingness to be embarrassed again and go back to step one and start as a beginner.”
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