Choose 3 Things and Stay Focused — Lunch with George Chen, Head of Public Policy, HK & TW, Facebook

“Our mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. And we know we can’t do this just ourselves.”

Home to the world’s social media giant, a tour around the HK Facebook office ‘click’started our Time Auction meeting with George, Head of Public Policy in Hong Kong and Taiwan before he dug into our mind-boggling questions on freedom of expression, the echo-chamber and the prevalence of ‘fake’ news (and also all the free food available all over the office).

Over a casual lunch, George spoke with us on his major career change from digitalizing the 114-year-old HK English-language newspaper to discussing online safety and data protection with government bodies at Facebook (i.e. George joined Facebook precisely one week before SCMP was bought by Alibaba)!

On top of making our mark on the Facebook Wall, taking snaps with the face- ‘over’sized emoji props and just sending heart eyes everywhere at the stunning office that manages our everyday consumption of information (not only with AI fyi), George taught us the guiding philosophies that has led him to “Stay Focused” throughout his career and more — our volunteers definitely gave this more than just a ‘like’ and that’s why we’re sharing the core takeaways with you here!

What’s your life motto?

“Stay focused.

Life is short; everybody has his or her own limits. You should maximize the usage of your time to focus on something you care about the most. Stay focused does not mean you cannot try different things, but you should have a goal whenever you want to do something. If you want to travel around the world, make a plan.”

What’s one habit that has improved your life significantly?

“It is important to do something to make you happy.

There are a lot of ups and downs in life. It is important to do something to make you happy and my way of doing that is to get a cup of ice cream.”

If you have to give a lesson on something unrelated to your career, what would it be?

“Languages are more than communication tools; they can change your vision.

I wish I had learned more foreign languages. I regretted not taking my Spanish and French studies seriously when I was young. As I grew up and became occupied with my work, I could not afford the time to do this. To me, languages are more than communication tools; they are something that can change your vision. Languages also open many doors for you: for cultural studies, and for your career. Russian may be a good choice if you want to study international relations.”

Thank you George for delaying your daily ice-cream to chat with us over lunch and raising 110 volunteers hours to Social Career, i-Future Weekend School, Hong Kong Society for the Deaf and more! Thank you to all the volunteers who contributed to make this happen!

For more opportunities to meet amazing people, check out Time Auction to see our upcoming gatherings.