The Elon Musk principles I copied
I came across a video of Elon Musk that summarises how he thinks. I listened to them and then took notes as I relistened to them. These notes now live on my calendar as a daily reminder to shape my thinking.
On work
Don’t aspire to glory. Aspire to work. Be useful. A measure of success I’d say is how many useful things you can get done. A useful life is a good life. The target is not status, recognition, or wealth. The target is useful output.
Are you contributing more than you consume? Try to have a positive net contribution to society.
Business exists for service. Money comes naturally as the result of service. If someone is trying to make a company work, they should expect to grind super hard.
Have a grow-the-pie mindset. People who do things that are morally questionable often have a zero-sum mindset. They think that to have more pie they need to eat someone else’s portion. The game is not zero-sum. The game is to grow-the-pie.
On finding your path
Find the overlap of your talents and interests. Even if you are the best of the best, there is always a chance of failure. So it is very important that you really like what you are doing. If you like what you are doing, you think about it even when you are not working.
Read broadly and meet broadly. Try to learn a little about a lot of things. How else would you know what you are really interested in if you do not explore? Also try to talk to people from all walks of life.
Actively seek out negative feedback. When friends get a product I tell them: “don’t tell me what you like. Tell me what you don’t like.”
On thinking
Break it down. First principles boils things down to the most fundamental truths. What are we sure as possible is true? And then reason up from there. Most people reason by analogy. They do what others have done before.
Reduce the requirements. Start by reducing the number of requirements. The common mistake is to optimize the thing which should not exist. First principles forces a harder question: why does this exist at all?
Add back. If you are not forced to add back 10% of what you deleted, you are not deleting enough.
On execution
Scale the problem. Push assumptions to their limits to find where they break. What if our volume was 1 million units a year. Is it still expensive? If it is still expensive, then volume is not the problem.
Run things in parallel. Any given thing can be sped up. Put as many elements in parallel as possible. Try not to serialise dependencies.
Speed up what should exist. Never optimise what should not exist in the first place.
Automate last.
On courage
It is normal to feel fear. If you just accept the probabilities then that diminishes the fear. But fear does not go away. Accepting the odds shrinks it. “When I started SpaceX I thought the odds of success were less than 10%. I accepted that I would probably lose everything. But maybe we could make progress.”
Let your troops see you in the fight. Show up, visibly, and the people around you follow. “I was sleeping on the factory floor under my desk for 3 years straight so that during shift change the entire team could see me. They knew I was there. And that made a huge difference.”
Which principle resonated with you the most?
For me it was the first - Don’t aspire to glory. Aspire to work. I love what I do. I love working with my teams. I love waking up everyday with problems to solve. I love playing the infinite game of life. It's not always fun. Sometimes I wake up anxious. Sometimes I cannot sleep. Sometimes I worry about my family and my future. There is always the money worry. But I always find a way to keep moving forward.
Follow the principles above to keep moving forward.
Best,
Harsh
I share extraordinary ideas I’m learning as a business builder, daily on my WhatsApp Community and LinkedIn, and weekly on my Sunday Email.