Elon Musk’s 11 Most Interesting Qualities That You Can Learn From
The richest man in the world has both bad and good sides. We can learn from both.
Elon Musk is an asshole. There’s no way around that, but there is a lot we can learn from him.
He revived electric cars with Tesla, commercialized space flight with SpaceX, is a huge advocate for sustainable energy through Tesla and is pushing for the safe use of AI with X.Ai.
I’m sure you can agree that he is the most outstanding entrepreneur of our time.
After reading the new Walter Isaacson biography, I decided to share the good and the bad about Elon Musk.
We can all learn something from the richest man in the world.
He is an extreme risk-taker
One of the most common traits among the wealthy is that they have all taken many risks. Elon is no exception. He was on the brink of losing it all more times than you could imagine.
He has been like that since a child.
His father would sit him down and yell at him for hours. Elon would simply shut off his “fear valve” in order to tolerate the abuse. This made him develop into an extreme risk-taker which we have seen time and time again throughout his life.
Once he makes a decision, unless someone can successfully prove him wrong, he will do whatever it takes in order to make it work.
One of the best examples is after Space X had 3 failed launches. The original plan was not to try again, but he decided he had no other choice because he needed to help make humans multi-planetary.
He risked it all on the 4th attempt and the risk paid off.
Elon sets ridiculous timelines
Setting ridiculous timelines is common among wealthy people and something that Steve Jobs was also well known for.
Elon will ask the team how long a task will take them, and then tell them how long they have to do it. The time he gives them is always exponentially shorter than they believe they need.
This tends to make the teams panic and they often start to make excuses as to why it is impossible. However, it makes them work harder, and quicker, and almost always leads to them finishing in a far quicker time than they predicted they would need.
This can be upsetting for many employees, but the ones who are sold on Elon’s mission are ready to make it work, and they do.
We are capable of more than we think, and Elon setting ridiculous timelines quite often proves that correct.
He has an incredible tolerance for stress
You don’t become the richest man in the world without going through a lot of stress. Of course with great risks, comes great stress.
He had to deal with high stress when he was a kid getting bullied at school, and especially by his dad. Elon continued to seek out that stress as he got older.
Elon will often put more pressure than needed on himself because he is so used to the stress, that when he isn’t stressed, life is almost too stagnant.
A great example is his takeover of Twitter. Things were going great for him and he needed a little more chaos. He brought it on himself and he later acknowledged that it was probably a mistake.
At times he has been so stressed that it is physically crippling and has affected his health. Elon keeps pushing though and that is largely because he believes in the crazy missions he sets for his companies.
He sets inspiring missions
Every company that Elon has created has been based on a mission statement that is almost impossible not to rally behind.
Tesla is pushing sustainable energy forward, and helping fight climate change, while Space X wants to make our species multi-planetary so that human consciousness can survive if something goes wrong on earth.
How could you not get behind that?
These missions inspire many to become Elon fanboys, kind of like myself. But more importantly, it convinces the employees working in his companies to work harder, longer and smarter.
By setting inspiring missions, he has created inspiring companies and has built up quite possibly the craziest fan base anyone has ever had.
He is truly himself
This is both a good and a bad trait. He is himself and there is no hiding it and that is something I can admire.
However, he is so much himself that he chased away those who were advertising on Twitter.
When trying to comfort advertisers who were thinking of leaving Twitter due to some of his tweets, he essentially told them that there are good sides to him and bad sides and that you can’t avoid that.
Not the comfort they were looking for.
The good part about being truly himself is that you know what to expect, you know what you’re getting yourself into.
I believe that everyone should be themselves at all times, but a lot of those who have an interest in Elon’s companies wish that he would tone it down a little bit.
Elon being himself has led to several massive drops in Tesla’s stock price over the years, and has now led to Twitter losing advertising revenue despite having more users and activity on the app than ever.
Being yourself comes with a price when you are kind of an asshole.
Elon’s a quick thinker
It’s hard to understand how many problems you are faced with daily running 6 massive companies. Elon now runs X, X.AI, Neuralink, Space X, The Boring Company and Tesla.
(There is definitely a point to make about time management too.)
He would not be able to run these companies without being a quick thinker. Managing that kind of workload requires being able to come up with solutions on the fly and delegating quickly.
Being a quick thinker is one of the big reasons why he has seen such immense success and definitely one of his best qualities.
Only the laws of physics can tell him no
To Elon, impossible is “almost” nothing. There is only 1 reason why the words “no” should ever come up and that is because the laws of physics say so.
This is something that is common among those with backgrounds in physics. For example, David Deutsch (who is widely known as the father of quantum computers) often says this.
With this kind of mindset, you can have a little idea of how difficult it must be to work for him. This is why he sets ridiculous timelines and has such high expectations of his employees.
But, this is also why he has been able to lead one of the greatest pushes in innovation and accomplish such incredible things.
Only the laws of physics can tell him no.
Elon is very, very focused
Every successful entrepreneur is able to focus extremely well. I talk about Steve Jobs because he embodies a lot of these qualities. But you can also look at people like Thomas Edison, Napoleon, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. They are all known for having incredible focus.
Elon has said that since he was young when he starts to compute something hard in his head, everything else goes silent. In a different biography, his mom described it as “daydreaming”, building rockets in his head.
If you are easily distracted, you will have a lot of trouble accomplishing great things. You need to be able to process information the first time, keep your head down, get things done, and think of ways to accomplish your tasks.
Focus is an incredibly powerful trait, and if you have it, make sure to nurture it.
He is extremely intense
What do you think it is like being inside the head of someone who is set on colonizing Mars? Probably pretty intense.
Many people who have worked with him cannot handle him because of how intense he is. They have trouble talking to him as it can be nerve-wracking.
His intensity is one of the reasons he can be an asshole. He will push his point forward and if you are wrong, he will unapologetically let you know you are wrong and put you down at the same time.
When he talks, you can tell it is very calculated, and quite often well thought through. Many people find it extremely intimidating to talk to him because of his intensity.
While intensity can be a bad trait, it is also one of the reasons for his success.
Those who are intense tend to be able to get things done and get other people to get things done too. The only issue is they piss people off and scare them along the way.
He makes incredibly impulsive decisions
If you follow his Twitter, you will fully understand just how impulsive he can be. Elon will often make tweets he later regrets because he was caught up in the moment.
A good example is his tweet about Paul Pelosi being attacked. He regretted it and knew it was a mistake.
He also makes impulsive business decisions. This is not always a bad thing though.
Making decisions quickly can be a very good quality if you know that you will be wrong sometimes.
Elon himself said that 20% of his decisions will tend to be wrong. He is aware of that, so is ready to correct it if needed. But, by making those quick decisions, he moves faster.
That has paid off many times in business but has punished him socially.
He has trouble displaying empathy
Although this is largely due to the fact that he has Asperger's (says those close to him), I can’t go without saying that his inability to display empathy is one of his downsides.
This has caused him to appear like an asshole when he wasn’t intending it to be, it’s caused him to push away employees, and sometimes even his family.
It is hard to get upset at someone for something that have little control over. You have to know what you are getting yourself into.
But regardless, many would agree his lack of empathy is one of his worst traits.
Closing remarks
Every human has good and bad qualities. Unfortunately for Elon, his are very public. This, however, is fortunate for us.
For one, this allows us to learn how to better shape our lives. While we might want to be as rich as him, we can see what that can do to someone and the toll it takes on them.
Also, it serves as an extremely important lesson.
We can’t avoid the bad.
Everyone has a little and to expect someone to be perfect is unrealistic and unreasonable. What we can do is learn from people like Elon, and do our best to be as good as possible.
So, I say we treat Elon the same as anyone else, learn from him, and optimize our lives accordingly. That way we too can strive to contribute as much to society as he has.
Thanks for reading.
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