Elon Musk - Why I Win

i certainly never expected to to to see the level of success that that's occurred um because i i'm actually an engineer and uh but i discovered that in order to do the engineering that i want to do i have to have my own company otherwise somebody makes me do something i don't want to do i think it's important to um have a a very um to apply critical thinking to this may sound trite but to apply critical critical thinking to what one is doing and by that i mean just um the fundamentals of logic you know of um do you have the right axioms um are they relevant and are you making the right conclusions based on those on those axioms that that's the essence of critical thinking and yet it is amazing how often people fail to do that um i think wishful thinking is uh innate uh in the human brain um you you want things to be the way you you wish them to be in so you tend to filter information that you shouldn't filter that's the most common flaw that i see and then i also tend to see that that people instead of um reasoning from first principles they tend they will tend to uh act in a mere they will they'll do things because others are doing them because there is a trend or or you know they just see everyone going that direction so they think that must be a good direction to go um which is sometimes correct but then sometimes you know you're you're going to run off a cliff or something [Music] so it's much better to to really look at things from you know as more same physics from a first principle standpoint what are the fundamental truths or the most fundamental truths in an arena and uh what what can you any conclusions logic that you come to must be derived from those fundamental truths well i hate to say it but the naysayers do get me down but but uh yeah i think absolutely um persistence is extremely important um you should not give up if there is if there's unless you're forced to give up you know unless there's no other choice um uh now that that that principle can be misapplied um if you happen to be trying to um penetrate a brick roll with your head uh you know so so you have to be cautious in in always saying one should always persist and never give up because there actually are times when you should give up um because you're doing something in error but if you're convinced that what you're doing is correct then you should never give up there's a friend of mine who's got a good saying about starting companies which i think is is true um you know starting companies is like eating glass and staring into the abuse of death if that sounds appealing be an entrepreneur actually that's where physics is really helpful except in unexplored areas of physics or difficult to explore is physics is very helpful for figuring out whether you're violating one of the say the the fundamental laws like uh are you conserving momentum and energy if you're not then you probably are not going to be successful or if you think you're not so yeah but i think i think one thing try to get to a useful prototype as soon as possible with the least amount of money i think that's that's usually a good idea you know everything works on powerpoint um and so people are somewhat skeptical if they see a powerpoint presentation or a website or something but if they see the actual hardware and it's working that is much much more convincing it also will help identify if what you're trying to do is uh impossible or extremely difficult or something like that you know like i said in the beginning i'm really primarily an engineer so i enjoy engineering that's that's what i derive the most intrinsic satisfaction or happiness from so uh in fact i happened to be up until 5 am this morning working on an engineering problem for an improvement to the rocket which uh i think i think will be good hopefully otherwise there's a lot of wasted sleep [Music] so i i really like yeah working under sharing problems particularly with with my engineering teams and coming up with with innovative ideas and making them a reality that's my what i enjoy the most i think certainly being focused on something that you're confident will have high value to someone else and just being really rigorous in making that assessment um because people tend to natural human tendency is wishful thinking um so a challenge for entrepreneurs is to say well what's the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking sticking to them versus pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have merit and it's it's that is a that is a really difficult thing to to tell you can you tell the difference between those two things so you need to be sort of very rigorous um in your self self analysis um i think certainly extremely tenacious and and then just work i mean you just have to put in you know 80 hour 80 to 100 hour weeks every week if if other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you're putting in 100 hour work weeks then even if you're doing the same thing you know that in in one year you will achieve what they achieve you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve well i i guess i don't mind taking risks um but um i think um you know very often people overweight what what enjoyment money can bring you know like buying lots of things is not necessarily the thing that leads to happiness and you know it and certainly being incrementally wealthy does not make one incrementally happy [Music] at least for me it's more like you know what what what what am i doing that's useful what's you know is it are my efforts um making the world a little bit better you know that kind of thing i mean i like to build things you know like to construct and to evaluate uh my efforts based on what what things have i helped to build that people have enjoyed that's really the main thing you know i think that you know if you look at any uh any big company you look at the early history you know it was always they they had to make progress and and i think this is maybe a good good general advice for somebody who's creating a company is you know you try to make something work at a small scale you prove yourself and then uh customers will give you a little bit more credit and then you can try something a little bit more and you you know with each successive iteration of the technology you build confidence you know bigger and bigger uh contracts and that kind of thing and it i think uh with the spacex that's that's pretty much what's happened we've um we've been able to gradually build the confidence of nasa and commercial satellite operators and and that's that's what's given us the resources to do some additional development uh like the vertical takeoff and landing i think it's certainly important to to persist in things i do think that there's a if there's a framework that that that physics teaches that's a helpful framework for thinking um you know which is to sort of reason from first principles and rather than by analogy um and to always question whether you're wrong and try to invalidate your own theories [Music] these are important things and yeah i mean i think also maybe people have too much fear of failure you know this you have to say well what would really happen to you if you failed i mean you're not going to stop you know probably will not lose shelter so why not try want to try things you know i think very often people self-limit what they're capable of without realizing it i mean i certainly admire steve jobs a lot for what he did i mean he certainly um created projects for products that were that had this amazing feel to them they just felt like uh you know somewhat magical and so he did great things with with with apple um and uh you know like ben franklin benjamin franklin you know in he was he seemed like someone who did the right thing at the right time and uh he was sort of a scientist and inventor and you know all around good guy i like how i can [Music] and but i like you know generally scientists and engineers and so at spacex for example the conference rooms are named after great scientists and engineers obviously tesla is named after nikola tesla so um you know i think uh anyone who's who's done useful things that added to the world and where you know you'd be sad if that person had not existed then i think those people are worth admiring

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Id: jNnMPRcmE1I

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021