Everyone needs an opportunity to just be themselves and not worry about how they look, says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. For himself, he found a way to take a break from public attention

It is very important for people to strike a balance between staying connected to the world and communicating within narrower and more private social circles, says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In a recent post, he shared his views on how the world and his life will change by 2030. In that post, Zuckerberg mentioned that the Internet has made it possible to connect people, but now people lack privacy. “When I was growing up in a small town, it was easy to find a niche and a purpose. But when there are billions of people around, finding your unique role is harder,” the businessman wrote. He believes that in the next decade, small communities will help people regain a sense of intimacy.

Mike Ronlien, founder and owner of the consulting firm Multiple Hats Management, wrote about the importance of balance in a comment on Zuckerberg’s post. Zuckerberg responded to him and supported his point. The billionaire wrote that everyone needs an opportunity to just be themselves and not worry about how they look to other people. Zuckerberg himself understood this very well after becoming a public figure. “I need time with family and friends when I’m not ‘Mark Zuckerberg,’ but just me as a person. I hope we [at Facebook] can present something like this to everyone,” the billionaire wrote.

Other billionaires have also found ways to take a break from the attention. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, for example, said he tries to meditate at least twice a day and has performed meditation programs for several days at least twice. In 2017, for his birthday, the businessman went to Myanmar, where he did not speak for 10 days, got up at four in the morning, and meditated all day, pausing only for breakfast, lunch, and a short walk.

Microsoft co-founder and second richest man in the world in the 2019 ranking Bill Gates also likes solitude. Since the 1990s, he has practiced “meditation weeks,” during which he goes alone into the wilderness (such as a lake house) with a stack of books.

Billionaire Oleg Deripaska #50 also went to the lake last year: instead of the Davos Forum, the businessman went fishing at Lake Baikal.