For quite a while now
I have been fascinated by Elon Musk's ability to accomplish incredibly difficult things and often at a ridiculously fast pace. Love him or hate him, you
can't deny that Elon Musk is a pretty productive guy. And, as someone who
loves digging in to see what makes successful people tick, I recently started to wonder what are the habits and practices and mindsets that drive
Elon Musk's ability to get things done. After reading Ashlee
Vance's biography on Musk as well as digging into
some of his Reddit AMAs and past online interviews,
I came up with five lessons that answer this question. And, these five lessons
are things that anybody can put into practice in their own lives. And, we're gonna start with
one that is deceptively simple. At an AMA he did on Reddit in 2015, one of the most updot, updoted, updooted. One of the most updooted (laughs). I should just say updooted. One of the most updooted
questions was what daily habit do you believe has the
largest positive impact on your life? To which Musk simply replied, "Showering." Now, I'll admit that min initial
reaction to this question was that Elon was basically
trolling this person. And, hey, it's possible that he was. But, it's also possible that
he was serious about it. And, reading his answer made
me think about a broader, but still related lesson
that I've learned myself. When I take my personal
appearance seriously, I take my work more seriously as well. If I wake up in the morning
and I shower immediately and I wear clothes that
make me feel confident, I'm likely to have a really productive day even if I'm working here at
home where nobody can see me. And, this is something that
many entrepreneurs learn really early on when they
start working for themselves. And, it's a lesson that
many students learn when they go to college and they get out of their parents' houses. And, the fewer external
structures you have in your life, you know, managers, parents,
incredibly tough fairies named Jorgen Von Strangle,
the more you have to rely on your own self-discipline and willpower to get things done. And, those two traits are
surprisingly influenced by your hygiene, by your
personal appearance, and by the organization and
cleanliness of your environment. So, if you wanna be more
productive in your work on a daily basis, take
these things seriously. Shower every day, or at least often enough that you don't smell like
a beta tester for a cologne made by Oscar the Grouch. And, dress well. And, by that I don't mean you have to wear a suit and tie to class, but wear clothes that make you feel confident
and that make it look like you're taking yourself seriously. Another thing that I noticed about Musk, which forms the basis
of our second lesson, is that he sets an example for his team. Musk is a famously demanding
CEO, expecting his employees to work long hours,
outwork the competition at every point, and basically
give up any semblance of a work-life balance. And, this can make him
seem abrasive and uncaring. Here's one thing that he said to one of his employees at Tesla. "I want you to think ahead
and think so hard every day "that your head hurts. "I want your head to hurt every
night when you go to bed." Now, despite this abrasive
nature, most of Musk's current and former employees have
a lot of respect for him. And, they're willing to
sacrifice a balanced life in order to meet his demands. Why is this? Well, one reason is
that Musk doesn't expect anyone on his teams to work
any harder than he does. In other words, he sets the example. Musk puts in anywhere between
85 to 100 hours per week, often working the full seven days. And, he also has an intense
system of bashing his tasks in order to wring every minute
for all that it's worth. So, while Musk's employees
are working hard, he's working harder. Of course, an integral
part of setting an example, is making sure that example is visible to the people whose morale
will benefit from it. And, that's why Musk chose
to put his desk at Tesla on the factory floor in the middle of all the other engineers' desks. Steve Jurvetson, who's one
of the board members at Tesla explained Musk's reasoning
for selecting this location. "He picks the most
visible place on purpose. "He's at Teslas just about
every Saturday and Sunday "and wants people to see him
and know they can find him." Now, here's how this relates
to your personal productivity. Deliberately choosing
to set a good example for those around you,
will further motivate you to consistently improve. When you know other people are watching, especially people that
you've put demands on, you're not gonna rest on your laurels. Plus, when you're working
on a group project, or if you eventually get into a situation where you're managing other
people, setting an example is gonna help to make
your team a more cohesive and effective unit. And, for Elon Musk, having
his teams be cohesive and effective is crucial
because he is constantly setting stretch goals, which is the basis for our third lesson. One of Musk's most
notorious character traits, is a tendency to set
incredibly ambitious deadlines for his companies' various projects. And, this can sometimes be unrealistic. If you're familiar with
Tesla's early history, you might remember that
they initially promised to ship the first Roadster back in 2006, a date that was further
pushed back and back and back until the Roadster finally
released in late 2008. On the flip side, these
seemingly impossible deadlines have a powerful effect on his teams. Here's how one former
executive at SpaceX put it. "It's like he has everyone
working on this car "that is meant to get from
Los Angeles to New York "on one tank of gas. "They'll work on the
car for a year and test "all of its parts. "Then, when they set off for
New York after that year, "all the vice presidents think privately "that the car will be
lucky to get to Las Vegas. "What ends up happening
is that the car gets "to New Mexico, twice as
far as they ever expected, "and Elon is still mad. "He gets twice as much as
anyone else out of people." And, I wanna put special emphasis on that last sentence there because it perfectly illustrates
the power of stretch goals. Essentially, a stretch goal is a goal that's beyond your current capabilities or sometimes your current
perception of your capabilities. If you think that you can do five pull-ups and you have a coach who tells
you to jump up on the bar and do 10, he's just
set a pretty challenging stretch goal for you. And, what's gonna happen
is you're probably not gonna get 10 pull-ups,
but you are gonna get seven. Often the seemingly
impossible stretch goal is exactly what's needed to push us past our previous conceived limits. You have to have the
guts to go for something that you don't think you
can currently achieve because in pursuit of
it, you're gonna bring your skills up to the level
that they need to be at to actually get it done. This kind of growth doesn't happen when you keep aiming for things that are just as doable as
what you've done before. And, Elon Musk knows this well. Another thing that Musk
knows well is the value of developing a wide knowledge base. Among the CEOs of all the
tech companies out there, Musk stands out as one of the
few who actually understands a lot of the science
behind the cars and rockets that his companies create. And, this wide understanding
of physics and math and engineering allows Musk
to actually follow along when his engineers
explain problems to him. And, he can often suggest
solutions that do end up working. Additionally, this wide
breadth of knowledge allows him to push past mental roadblocks and to motivate his team
to innovate and do things that others thought were impossible. The idea of reusing rockets
is a great example here. In his book, Ashlee Vance notes that, "There's a camp of space
experts who think Musk "is flat-out wasting his
time, and that engineering "calculations already
prove the reusable rockets "to be a fool's errand." And, yet in March of this
year, SpaceX launched the same Falcon 9 rocket into
space for the second time. Reusable rockets are here. Now, Musk's knowledge of
science and engineering isn't solely a product
of his pre-CEO years. Even as he worked to run his companies, he also strove to learn the fundamentals of what his engineers were building. Here's a great passage
from Vance's book on this. He would trap an engineer
in the SpaceX factory and set to work grilling
him about a type of valve or specialized material. "I though at first that
he was challenging me "to see if I knew my
stuff," said Kevin Brogan, one of the early engineers. "Then I realized he was
trying to learn things. "He would quiz you until he
learned 90% of what you know." Musk's insistence on
learning about every aspect of the engineering that goes
into his companies' products makes him a T-shaped person,
somebody with a deep knowledge and skills in one particular
area, but also a shallower, yet still fairly substantial
amount of knowledge in a broad array of other
topics and disciplines. By contrast, an I-shaped
person, a specialist, has a deep knowledge
in one particular area, but that's about it. They basically stay in their lane. And, there's also what you could call a dash-shaped archetype. These are your jack of all trades, master of none type people. Out of these three archetypes,
you should be striving to become a T-shaped
person, because doing so gives you the best of both world. You develop expertise
in one particular area to a degree where you can make a truly meaningful contribution to it, but having broad knowledge
in a lot of other areas allows you to be more
creative, and allows you to look at problems from a new perspective and solve things in a different way. And, that brings us to our final and most important lesson from Musk. Always assume that you can improve. I wanna start this
section off with what is hands-down my favorite
quote from Elon Musk. "I think it's very important
to have a feedback loop, "where you're constantly
thinking about what you've done "and how you could be doing it better. "I think that's the single
best piece of advice: "constantly think about how you
could be doing things better "and questioning yourself." Elon Musk is never satisfied
with where he is now. He may be proud of his accomplishments and what his companies
have been able to achieve, but he knows that in every single area there's always something
that could be done better. There's always a better, faster, cooler, or cheaper way to do it. One of my favorite examples
of this mindset in action is when he got a $120,000
quote from a supplier for an electromechanical
actuator, which is a part that needs to go into a rocket. Now, most aerospace companies
probably would've accepted the quote price, shoved
the part into their rocket, and passed the expense
on to their clients. But, Elon Musk, instead,
laughed at the supplier and told an employee to go
build the exact same part from scratch with a budget of $5,000. And, that employee, whose
name was Steve Davis, ended up building the part for $3,900, which was even under
the budget that Musk set and that part ended up going to space in the Falcon 1 rocket. So, again, there is always
a better, or in this case, cheaper way to do it. Now, there's a name for
this method of thinking. It's called the growth
mindset and it's potentially the single most important
factor that separates successful people from their
less successful counterparts. A growth-minded person thinks
that they can learn anything as long as they're willing
to put enough effort into it. If they fail, they're gonna get back up and they're gonna try again,
this time with new knowledge about what not to do. And, at the end of the day, they realize that their potential is only
limited by their willingness to work hard and keep
trying new approaches until something works. People who don't think this
way, have a fixed mindset. They tend to see the world as something that is the way it is, it's
not really gonna change. And, that they themselves are
not really the kind of people that get better. They may also believe that the
way they currently do things is the best way to do it. These are the kind of people that think if it ain't broke don't fix it. But, the thing is, this type of thinking is what gets people stuck in ruts. It causes stagnation. Meanwhile, those who live
a growth-oriented life are going to make progress. And, even if the progress
they make is small, even if it's just 1% per day, over time, well, that adds up. Now, earlier on we talked
about how Elon Musk is a T-shaped person, how
he has that deep level of expertise that's augmented
by a broad knowledge base of many different topics. And, this is something
that you should be striving to become, especially as
more and more companies are leaning on algorithms and automation to solve the really
straightforward problems. If, say you're an engineering student, you definitely wanna
spend most of your time focusing on the main things like fluid dynamics and algorithms. But, if you spent some
of your independent time also dabbling in things like
marketing or graphic design or maybe even a tech area
that you're not familiar with like machine learning AI,
you're gonna be able to use your main skill set more
creatively and you might find that you actually find a
job at the intersection of two fields that you
didn't even know existed in the first place. And, if you wanna start
building some initial competence in these outside areas, you
should aim to do it actively. And, one of the best places that you can do that is Skillshare. Skillshare has over
17,000 courses and a ton on different topics including all the ones I just mentioned above: graphic design, AI and machine learning, marketing. In fact, they have a
fantastic marketing course from Seth Godin who is
one of my favorite authors that you should definitely check out. And, the best thing
about all their courses is that they have hands-on,
practical components. So, instead of just watching videos, you're gonna be able to sink your teeth into some challenges
that will really stretch your capabilities and
accelerate your learning. Now, while they do have
thousands of courses for you to choose from, I do
wanna recommend one course in particular this week. And that's Keith Yamashita's
course on storytelling. Human beings are wired to love stories. So if you can learn the
elements of good storytelling and how to craft one
yourself, you're gonna have an easier time connecting with people and getting them onboard with your ideas, whether you're giving a presentation or interviewing for a job. So, if you wanna go through that course or dig into any other area
that you're interested in, give Skillshare a try. And, the first 500
people who click the link in the description down below and sign up, will get a two-month free
trial of unlimited learning. After that, a premium
subscription starts at less than 10 bucks a month and you
can cancel at any time. So, go check 'em out and
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Actually found there to be some really helpful pointers in there. Ive watched a good handful of Musk interviews and recognized some of the things Musk alluded to in this video.
In one of them Musk said a person is never exactly right and really the goal is just to become less wrong over time. It's a really humble way to recognize and accept imperfection while maintaining a growth mindset. You do something once and get it done, and next time you do it, you do it better, and so on, iteratively. And the "feedback loop" is how you get outside of your own perception and find that better way when you hit a personal block. You need honest opinion from outsiders so you can recognize when you're wrong
I put this in my “Watch Later”. This is why I will never be Elon Musk.
Great video.
Updooted.
This is great, but as a certified life coach i'd probably add a 6th item.
in another interview he says he gets most of his best ideas while showering