#415 How Elon Thinks

**David Senra** (0:00)
My friend Eric Jorgenson has spent a few years and thousands and thousands of hours reading everything that Elon has written, reading everything that has written about Elon, watching every single interview that Elon has ever given. And then he compiled all of Elon's most useful ideas into the book that I'm holding in my hand, which is The Book of Elon. The subtitle is Elon's Most Useful Ideas in His Own Words. I'm going to read one line from Eric about the benefit that he experienced from doing this and then from here on out, every other thing will be Elon in his own words. Eric writes, to me, Elon represents the idea that I am capable of more than I ever imagined. And so I'm just going to run through in chronological order all the notes and highlights I took from reading and rereading this book. The idea is I want this to feel as if Elon is speaking directly to you and I. So it starts out, Elon says, I don't mind if my legacy is accurate or inaccurate, as long as I die feeling I've done the right thing for the future of consciousness.
Elon gives a lot of advice centered around making sure that you're living a useful life, building things that make other people's lives better is the way I think about this. He says, you could choose to not be ordinary. You could choose not to conform to the conventions taught to you by your parents. It's possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary. Be useful. The measure of success in my life is how many useful things can I get done? I wake up in the morning and ask, how can I be useful today? I want to maximize my utility. I try to take the set of actions most likely to improve the probability that the future will be good. Do useful things for your fellow human beings. It is hard to be useful, to contribute more than you consume. Can you have a positive net contribution to society? Aim for that. I have a lot of respect for someone who puts in an honest day's work to do useful things. I admire anyone making a positive contribution to humanity. And then Elon was asked a question, like, how do you know if you're helping? And I liked his answer here. How many people did you help? Multiplied by how much help you provided each person on average. For any product you're trying to create, ask yourself the utility improvement compared to the current state of the art, multiplied by how many people it would affect. Building something that makes a big difference to a small number of people is just as great as something that makes a small difference for a vast number of people. Not every product will change the world, but if it's making people's lives better, that's great. And so then he talks about what he's trying to do is make the future better by developing new technology. The future will not get here fast enough unless we force it. I came to the conclusion that if we can advance the knowledge of the world, if we can do things that expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we're better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened. And so he's asked a follow up to this. What do you think is your most core skill? He says, I devote myself to the advancement of humanity using technology. My core personal competence is technology. I want to build wondrous new technologies where you feel awe when you see it. How does that even happen? How is that even possible? And then he talks about the motivations behind starting his companies. And he's giving advice to fellow entrepreneurs. Don't start a company because you want to be an entrepreneur or because you want to make money. It is better to approach from this angle. What is the useful thing you could build that you wish existed in the world? I did not start companies from the standpoint of what's the best risk adjusted rate of return or what I think could be successful. I just find things that need to happen and try to make them happen. I thought these things needed to get done. If my money was lost, okay, it was still worth trying. And then what you figure out what to work on, he says, then try to get other people to work with you to create that thing. Keep making it better and better. If you create something useful, money will be the result. A properly working economy rewards the creation of useful goods and services. Successful entrepreneurs come in all sizes, shapes and flavors. I'm not sure there's any one particular trait that makes them. If there is only one, have an obsessive nature about the quality of the product. In this context, being obsessive compulsive is a good thing. Given that, really, really, really liking what you do is a big advantage. If you like what you're doing, you think about it even when you're not working. And then he talks about the inevitable pain that comes from building a company. I always tell you one of my favorite maxims from the history of entrepreneurship comes from the founder of Four Seasons. He says, excellence is the capacity to take pain. Elon says, my way of dealing with mental problems is to make sure you really care about what you're doing and then take the pain. On the next page, he follows up on that. If you need encouragement, don't start a company. And then he talks about that humanity fails over and over again about predicting the popularity or the uses for the invention of new technology. When you're building a radically new product, people don't know they want it yet. When they first started making TVs, they did a famous nationwide survey. Will you ever buy a TV? And around 96% of respondents said no. Then he goes back to this reoccurring theme that he repeats that you should be creating more than you're consuming. It is much better to work on adding to the economic pie, create more than you consume. A lot of this book goes into his work ethic. The fact that he thinks the things that he's working on are very important, so therefore he's willing to endure a lot of times of just pain and suffering. Says, work like hell. I am wired for war. He's asked the question, why doesn't the world have more Elon Musk's? If you think you want to beat me or do the things I've done, I would say you're probably mistaken. Long periods of my life have been very painful and difficult. The amount I torture myself is next level.