The 'other Zuckerberg’s' three- point plan for having it all (2024)

Randi Zuckerberg has a theory. Heard of her? She’s the other Zuckerberg. A serial entrepreneur, TED Talks aficionado and older sister of Mark (yes the Facebook one) who has written a self-help book, Pick Three, in which she outlines her manifesto for a healthy work-life balance. Work, sleep, family, friends, fitness: you can’t have them all at once, she says.

I’d heard variations on Pick Three from friends before I finished university and started work, along the lines of “family, friends, work, you’ve got to pick two of three, you won’t be able to have them all”. I scoffed, swore to be “friends forever” with them and then, inevitably, lost touch. So Zuckerberg has a point.

Moreover, her Silicon Valley spin on this is more novel. Her 2.0 take is this: pick a different three, every day of the week.

“The first time I actually said ‘pick three’ out loud was in a moment of frustration,” she writes. “It was approximately the 100th time I was part of a conference panel where I’d been asked by the moderator, ‘Randi, you’re a mom AND you have a career. How do you balance it all?’”

And lo, a book was born. Zuckerberg interweaves life hacks for running a business to getting a good night’s rest with her own biography. She attended Harvard, moonlighted in amateur dramatics, invented Facebook Live, starred in the Broadway hit Rock of Ages, married, had children and founded several companies, including Zuckerberg Communications.

“I actively have to tell myself to pick ‘work’ less and focus on other areas of my life a bit more,” she says.

Motivational for some, irksome for others. It’s nevertheless a good point. Does it work in real life though?

“There’s simply no shortcut in life to putting in the hours, hunkering down, and working your butt off,” writes Zuckerberg. “You can’t achieve anything of importance or significance by striving to HAVE IT ALL in a 24-hour period. Talk about stress!” She’s slightly better than her younger brother at all that human “interfacing” stuff. “Mark even once left a meeting with President Obama early so he could catch my Broadway debut,” she says.

A “total data nerd”, Zuckerberg prescribes a 10-day tally-up to plot your life. Hers begins: WORK. SLEEP. FITNESS; WORK. SLEEP. FAMILY; WORK. SLEEP. FRIENDS; WORK, FITNESS, FAMILY; WORK, FITNESS, FRIEND.

Her own rubric is dotted with genuinely useful tips for improving and economising all five to suit modern life (although a relatively specific one: for family, she suggests staying connected with a monthly family book club and a private Facebook group).

As a far less successful person, perhaps I’m not quite the target audience. I do have an increasingly successful younger brother, so we have that in common (and I too overindulge in parentheses).

For instance, on Friday I got to work (tick) and then a Taylor Swift gig in the evening with a friend (tick), drank a lot and as a result had a rubbish night’s sleep. So that’s ... two? There is a 30-second dash for a train, but “working out for 25 minutes or jogging for 25 minutes on a daily basis may not sound like much to write home about,” says Zuckerberg. She is a fitness machine, “even though the Chicago marathon in 2003 was the only marathon I’ve run”, she humbly brags.

On Saturday I had work to do in Kensington. I also had someone to see (brunch, with my girlfriend). And then I’d want go to sleep (because I would have a hangover). Perfect.

Except it wasn’t perfect because the plan changed — the brunch sprawled into the afternoon, I dashed back and forth to the office twice. Does that now count as double? Later, it was about 30°C so I slept like a hot coal, which is to say quite possibly on fire (to be fair, Randi does recommend reducing the room temperature to about 19°C).

On Sunday, I pick: finishing an article in the morning then watching England vs Panama with friends. The football is a 6-1 drubbing by England and so should probably count as six in its own right.

My family later persuade me to hang out with them, and will not take a Facebook group as substitute. I then, quite unrelatedly, fall asleep on my old bed at 8pm — securing a surprising good night’s sleep.

“I can hear you now: ‘Randi, I can totally pick all five!’,” Zuckerberg says, talking impressively to both the reader and herself. “While I have no doubt that every once in a while, for a day or two, you can manage to hit all five of these, it’s really not sustainable in the long run.”

I’m sure you’d rather be a Randi than a me, reader. Those Zuck bucks do sound enticing. But her friends don’t. “When I left Facebook, I felt like people saw me as little more than a human ATM for the first year,” she says. And even after drawing up my plans for the next week, I don’t feel much like sticking to it. That’s not a life, it’s a spreadsheet.

Pick Three: You Can Have it All (Just Not Every Day) by Randi Zuckerberg is published by Dey Street Books, price £20. Buy it here.

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