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 them 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 an AMA heated
over on reddit in 2015 one of the most
up to up doated Abdul did one of the
most updated one of the most updated
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 my
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
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 want to 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
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 and his
team's to work any harder than he does
in other words he sets the example must
puts in anywhere between 85 to 100 hours
per week often working the full seven
days and he also has an intense system
of batching his tasks in order to wring
every minute for all that it's worth so
while must 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 I must 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 of Tesla
explained Musk's reasoning for selecting
this location he picks the most visible
place on purpose he's at Tesla 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 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 company's
various projects and these 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 and tow the Roadster finally
released in late 2008 on the flipside
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
setup 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 want to put special
emphasis in 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 ten he's just set a pretty
challenging stretch goal for you and
what's gonna happen is that you're
probably not gonna get 10 pull-ups but
you are gonna get seven often a
seemingly impossible stretch goal is
exactly what's needed to push us past
our preconceived 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 an Elon Musk knows this well
another thing that must 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 most 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 set
there's a camp of space experts who
think musk is flat-out wasting his time
and that engineering calculations
already proved 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 you
work to learn as 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 thought 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 company's products makes him a
t-shaped person somebody with 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 and 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 worlds 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 want to start the
section off with what is hands down at
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
hundred and twenty thousand dollar 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 have accepted the quote price
shoved the part to the rocket and past
the expense onto 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 apart for
$3,900 which was even under the budget
at musk set and that part ended up going
to space in the Falcon 1 rocket
so again there is always a better or in
KACE 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
at the end of the day they realize 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 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 now 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 want to 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 and
AI you're going to be able to use your
main skillset 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 want to 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 and for topics including all the
ones I just mentioned above graphic
design AI machine learning marketing in
fact I 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
going to be able to sink your teeth into
some challenges that will really stretch
your capabilities and accelerate
you're learning now while they do have
thousands of courses for you to choose
from I do want to 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 on board with your ideas whether
you're giving a presentation or
interviewing for a job so if you want to
go through that course or dig into any
other area that you're interested in
give the 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 them out and I want to
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