The Intriguing Routine & Life Lessons From Elon Musk Will Inspire The Sh*t Out Of You
A story of Elon Musk’s relentless pursuit for efficiency and excellence.
We have all seen so many inventions that were created out of necessity by people who have dedicatedly worked to find the solution to the problem. Electricity, an electric lamp, wireless communications, an aeroplane, or even the first-ever wheel were all invented by someone who was seeking a solution, testing a thousand times or even studying things in nature as they looked for a solution everywhere. Elon Musk is one such person who is changing the world as we see it.
Elon Musk is the Tesla of the 21st century, except for the fact that Musk made a fortune out of these inventions, ideas, contributions, etc. He is the founder, CEO, CTO, and chief designer of SpaceX, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc., the founder of The Boring Company, co-founder of Neuralink, and co-founder of OpenAI. He became the second-richest person in the world as published by Forbes in a blog post. Furthermore, he reinvented multiple industries in a short span of time. Undoubtedly, he is an inspiration for startups and entrepreneurs across the world.
100 Hours Week Routine
Elon Musk has his own way of doing things, and it’s hard to deny that he is a pretty productive guy. His 85-100 hours a week have had a huge impact on the world and yielded tremendous results, there’s no question about it. His daily routine can be summed up as work, eat, sleep, with work taking up a bulk of that time. He goes to bed at around 1 am and gets about 6 to 6.5 hours of sleep.
“Sleep is really great. I find if I don’t get enough sleep I’m quite grumpy. I could drop below a certain threshold of sleep, although I would be awake more hours I would get less done because my mental acuity would be affected.” - Elon Musk in a Reddit AMA
Musk usually skips his breakfast to save time, although he will occasionally grab a coffee and an omelette. Another daily habit is that he’ll always find time for is a cold shower, which he attributes to the source of many ideas. He tries to multitask everything, like running on a treadmill while watching television. He also takes a keen interest in dabbling in karate, taekwondo, judo, and Brazilian jiujitsu.
Elon Musk is efficient, and he wants his team to be efficient. Musk spends 80% of his time at work attempting to build and create the next-generation product, while the other 20% of his day is spent in face-to-face meetings, which he despises.
In a 2018 mail sent out to Tesla employees, Musk gave recommendations for conducting meetings efficiently,
“Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.
Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved.
Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.” - Excerpts from the Tesla mail
Elon Musk in a tweet had said that he gives 90% of his time to engineering at SpaceX and about 60% of his time at Tesla, while the rest of the time he spends on his other ventures, where he is a co-founder or investor.
Undoubtedly, Musk is an inspiration for Students, Programmers, Technology hobbyists, and Entrepreneurs. He reinvented and reengineered multiple industries in a short span of time.
The Life Lessons
I have watched hundreds of Elon Musk’s interviews. He constantly strives for ruthless efficiency, and he believes by working hard, he can achieve an astronomical amount of success in the completion of his goals. I have tried to summarize as concisely as possible.
Always Start The Day With Critical Work
Just focus on signal over noise, don’t waste time on stuff that doesn’t actually make things better. Find your most important task (MIT) for the day and tackle it first, your MIT should be the one thing that creates the most impact on your work. Use the 80/20 rule to help you figure it out and get in the habit of doing it before moving to anything else.
Feedback Loops As An Improvement Tool
Use feedback loops to keep you thinking about what you’ve done and how you could do it better in the future. Musk’s work ethic includes incorporating not just his own, but also that of others. He advises entrepreneurs to seek feedback, particularly unfavorable input. While it may be painful at first, you usually end up getting a lot more out of it in the end. He also prioritizes recruiting the top experts in any profession who can give consistent and honest criticism. Shortening feedback loops results in more efficiency, faster implementation, and a higher-quality completed product. The best thing is that it is applicable to both your personal and professional lives.
Mastering Your Communication Skills
This is an important skill to have. You can write a fantastic book, but it will be useless if you are not able to present it to a publisher. Similarly, you can build a product, develop an app, or have a brilliant business concept, but you must also be able to explain the product/app/idea to the client.
Time Management Is Crucial
Running so many businesses is no joke. Musk is always attempting to optimize his time through the use of feedback loops. Following a highly thorough and particular daily plan is a huge part of Elon Musk’s work ethic, as it is for many other ultra-productive and successful people. He divides his calendar into five-minute intervals, and getting into one of them is difficult.
Multitask Whenever You Can Save Time
Elon Musk’s work ethic includes smart multitasking whenever feasible. In a productivity technique known as batching, he mixes many jobs. For example, he may respond to emails while eating or have a meeting over lunch. Working exercise while watching TV is another example.
Develop A Broad And Wide Knowledge Base
According to his brother, Elon Musk grew up reading two novels a day. In reality, he had a thirst for education from boyhood. Imagine, Musk didn’t know how to code; he began learning to create in BASIC (a computer programming language) on his own using a book that suggested a program in 6 months. He finished this book in 3 days. At the age of 12, he developed a game called Blaster, which kinda looked like this. Elon Musk was able to sell his game for $500 to PC and Office Technology. He learned how to generate a profit from his initial steps in the world of programming. A critical first step in what was to come for him. Elon Musk recognized that reading books to learn new things may be highly gratifying after his initial success. Reading numerous books resulted in a broad grasp of physics, math, engineering, and computer science.
“It is important to view knowledge as a sort of a semantic tree. Make sure you understand the fundamental principles i.e. the trunk and big branches before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.” - Musk on Knowledge
Develop A Growth Mindset
In 2004, Musk called a supplier to inquire about the cost of an electromechanical actuator. The supplier quoted $120,000. Musk dissected the component’s needs and asked Steve Davis, SpaceX’s director of advanced projects, to build one from scratch for under $5,000. Davis spent 9 months designing and building the actuator for $3,900, which flew to space inside the Falcon 1 rocket. Elon Musk is never happy with his current position. His firm has accomplished a great deal, but Musk understands that there is always space for development in every field. There’s always a better, faster, or cheaper way to do things.
Well, Elon Musk has been a massive inspiration for so many people, including myself. Everything about him is fascinating and intriguing. Everything he does goes viral and creates memes, so he is constantly in the headlines. Musk thrives on competition. He and Mark Zuckerberg have had debates over artificial intelligence. And now he is in a Billionaire Space Race with American billionaire Jeff Bezos, British billionaire Richard Branson, and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.
Reflecting on Elon Musk’s work ethics and life lessons demonstrates that no matter how different you are or what you like doing, there is nothing you can’t do if you work hard.
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