# Elon Musk  ## Metadata - Author: [[Walter Isaacson]] - Full Title: Elon Musk - Category: #books - Summary: Elon Musk often became deeply focused on work, neglecting personal relationships and sharing his struggles with others. During tough times at Tesla and SpaceX, he would go into crisis mode, making drastic decisions and working around the clock. His impulsive purchase of Twitter revealed his struggle to navigate human emotions in a social media environment, leading to feelings of regret and disappointment. ## Highlights - Musk would later talk about—even joke about—having Asperger’s, a common name for a form of autism-spectrum disorder that can affect a person’s social skills, relationships, emotional connectivity, and self-regulation. “He was never actually diagnosed as a kid,” his mother says, “but he says he has Asperger’s, and I’m sure he’s right.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11nydk9nw5ycgnrgs8nczx)) - As a result, he was bad at picking up social cues. “I took people literally when they said something,” he says, “and it was only by reading books that I began to learn that people did not always say what they really meant.” He had a preference for things that were more precise, such as engineering, physics, and coding. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11nffdyyj6bwthx3cn5mbm)) - Reading remained Musk’s psychological retreat. Sometimes he would immerse himself in books all afternoon and most of the night, nine hours at a stretch. When the family went to someone’s house, he would disappear into their host’s library. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10w08rb1bkr4qmwnhzygkk)) - Musk read both sets of his father’s encyclopedias and became, to his doting mother and sister, a “genius boy.” To other kids, however, he was an annoying nerd. “Look at the moon, it must be a million miles away,” a cousin once exclaimed. Replied Elon, “No, it’s like 239,000 miles, depending on the orbit.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10vjxhsmtxs62grh841m4s)) - One book that he found in his father’s office described great inventions that would be made in the future. “I would come back from school and go to a side room in my father’s office and read it over and over,” he says. Among the ideas was a rocket propelled by an ion thruster, which would use particles rather than gas for thrust. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10wn7fz24gzqps4ezv7518)) - Throughout his life, Musk had three ways of escaping the emotional drama that he tended to generate. The first was the one that he shared with Navaid Farooq at Queen’s: an ability to zone out on empire-building strategy games, such as Civilization and Polytopia. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv12ay2df3t9ks0qxhav6was)) - he had a fanatic love of video games and the skills to make money creating them, but that was not the best way to spend his life. “I wanted to have more impact,” he says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv110rex6yxymt5t13rwjkj0)) - Musk planned to enroll at Stanford at the end of the summer to study material science as a graduate student. Still fascinated by capacitors, he wanted to research how they might power electric cars. “The idea was to leverage advanced chip-making equipment to make a solid state ultracapacitor with enough energy density to give a car long range,” he says. But as he got closer to enrolling, he began to worry. “I figured I could spend several years at Stanford, get a PhD, and my conclusion on capacitors would be that they aren’t feasible,” he says. “Most PhDs are irrelevant. The number that actually move the needle is almost none.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv114qasm050ef4vp3we6q0p)) - Just before the enrollment deadline for Stanford, Musk went to Toronto to get advice from Peter Nicholson of Scotiabank. Should he pursue the idea for the Virtual City Navigator, or should he start the PhD program? Nicholson, who had a PhD from Stanford, did not equivocate. “The internet revolution only comes once in a lifetime, so strike while the iron is hot,” he told Musk as they walked along the shore of Lake Ontario. “You will have lots of time to go to graduate school later if you’re still interested.” When Musk got back to Palo Alto, he told Ren he had made up his mind. “I need to put everything else on hold,” he said. “I need to catch the internet wave.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv115km4a69wn014z7frqpyc)) - He actually hedged his bets. He officially enrolled at Stanford and then immediately requested a deferral. “I’ve written some software with the first internet maps and Yellow Pages directory,” he told Bill Nix, the material science professor. “I will probably fail, and if so I would like to come back.” Nix said it would not be a problem for Musk to defer his studies, but he predicted that he would never come back.  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11681h5eqad3s8adr086fc)) - In January 1999, less than four years after Elon and Kimbal launched Zip2, Proudian called them into his office and told them that Compaq Computer, which was seeking to juice up its AltaVista search engine, had offered $307 million in cash. The brothers had split their 12 percent ownership stake 60–40, so Elon at age twenty-seven walked away with $22 million and Kimbal with $15 million. Elon was astonished when the check arrived at his apartment. “My bank account went from, like, $5,000 to $22,005,000,” he says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11vagf7vz622nsmjrj0phg)) - The Musks gave their father $300,000 out of the proceeds and their mother $1 million. Elon bought an eighteen-hundred-square-foot condo and splurged on what for him was the ultimate indulgence: a $1 million McLaren F1 sports car, the fastest production car in existence. He agreed to allow CNN to film him taking delivery. “Just three years ago I was showering at the Y and sleeping on the office floor, and now I’ve got a million-dollar car,” he said as he hopped around in the street while the car was unloaded from a truck. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11w59eswwc7q7xnnbs95d9)) - “I’d like to be on the cover of Rolling Stone,” he told CNN. But he would end up having a conflicted relationship with wealth. “I could go and buy one of the islands of the Bahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom, but I am much more interested in trying to build and create a new company,” he said. “I haven’t spent all my winnings. I’m going to put almost all of it back to a new game.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11xbs4bktr7xn6dfh77sn3)) - So he bought a cone and walked around campus until he found her studying a Spanish text in the student center. “I think this is your favorite flavor,” he said, handing her the dripping cone. “He’s not a man who takes no for an answer,” she says. Justine at the time was breaking up with someone who seemed much cooler, a writer who sported a soul patch of hair on his chin. “I thought the soul patch was a dead giveaway that the guy was a douche,” says Musk. “So I convinced her to go out with me.” He told her, “You have a fire in your soul. I see myself in you.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11yjxjjpnyefdm9ezpfm0v)) - She was impressed by his aspirations. “Unlike other ambitious people, he never talked about making money,” she says. “He assumed that he would be either wealthy or broke, but nothing in between. What interested him were the problems he wanted to solve.” His indomitable will—whether for making her date him or for building electric cars—mesmerized her. “Even when it seemed like crazy talk, you would believe him because he believed it.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11z7qz6gmvcc2r7v43ehcb)) - But Musk, who liked edginess in his relationships, was smitten. One night over dinner, Justine recalls, he asked how many kids she wanted to have. “One or two,” she answered, “although if I could afford nannies, I’d like to have four.” “That’s the difference between you and me,” he said. “I just assume that there will be nannies.” Then he rocked his arms and said, “Baby.” He was already a strong believer in having kids. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv12334qsat7pn6f4bcyesmn)) - Thiel got a ride with Musk in his McLaren. “So, what can this car do?” Thiel asked. “Watch this,” Musk replied, pulling into the fast lane and flooring the accelerator. The rear axle broke and the car spun around, hit an embankment, and flew in the air like a flying saucer. Parts of the body shredded. Thiel, a practicing libertarian, was not wearing a seatbelt, but he emerged unscathed. He was able to hitch a ride up to the Sequoia offices. Musk, also unhurt, stayed behind for a half-hour to have his car towed away, then joined the meeting without telling Harris what had happened. Later, Musk was able to laugh and say, “At least it showed Peter I was unafraid of risks.” Says Thiel, “Yeah, I realized he was a bit crazy.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv129fxk8wrk25fdnmn491g9)) - Musk now had a new mission, one that was loftier than launching an internet bank or digital Yellow Pages. He went to the Palo Alto public library to read about rocket engineering and started calling experts, asking to borrow their old engine manuals. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv1131jb9d4y5gh79sf1snfs)) - At a gathering of PayPal alumni in Las Vegas, he sat in a cabana by the pool reading a tattered manual for a Russian rocket engine. When one of the alums, Mark Woolway, asked him what he planned to do next, Musk answered, “I’m going to colonize Mars. My mission in life is to make mankind a multiplanetary civilization.” Woolway’s reaction was unsurprising. “Dude, you’re bananas.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv1135gbg930cn4qzzaq0zr9)) - Reid Hoffman, another PayPal veteran, had a similar reaction. After listening to Musk describe his plan to send rockets to Mars, Hoffman was puzzled. “How is this a business?” he asked. Later Hoffman would realize that Musk didn’t think that way. “What I didn’t appreciate is that Elon starts with a mission and later finds a way to backfill in order to make it work financially,” he says. “That’s what makes him a force of nature.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv111vxy1q0mgk6zxhdaa9dy)) - This led him to develop what he called an “idiot index,” which calculated how much more costly a finished product was than the cost of its basic materials. If a product had a high idiot index, its cost could be reduced significantly by devising more efficient manufacturing techniques. Rockets had an extremely high idiot index. Musk began calculating the cost of carbon fiber, metal, fuel, and other materials that went into them. The finished product, using the current manufacturing methods, cost at least fifty times more than that. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10j9k13vkce69r1njj7b6p)) - The algorithm At any given production meeting, whether at Tesla or SpaceX, there is a nontrivial chance that Musk will intone, like a mantra, what he calls “the algorithm.” It was shaped by the lessons he learned during the production hell surges at the Nevada and Fremont factories. His executives sometimes move their lips and mouth the words, like they would chant the liturgy along with their priest. “I became a broken record on the algorithm,” Musk says. “But I think it’s helpful to say it to an annoying degree.” It had five commandments: 1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10nvjtaffzg2qekqxfh8sk)) - It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10pgcv9p5jbk28j85eg8vp)) - Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10pnbtwftmetdk9xe6ryqy)) - When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10q11bj9s6y44m923apsdj)) - A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10q9w17jrs8cxg8eedghhr)) - The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10qfwvzg8zwh19n3g38jtg)) - “I am selling almost all physical possessions,” he tweeted three days before X was born. “Will own no house.” He explained to Joe Rogan the sentiment that led to that decision. “I think possessions kind of weigh you down and they’re an attack vector,” he said. “In recent years ‘billionaire’ has become pejorative, like that’s a bad thing. They’ll say, ‘Hey, billionaire, you’ve got all this stuff.’ Well, now I don’t have stuff, so what are you going to do?” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11qevvvtbkv7s9xfyvh0r4)) - Elon declined. “I’ve just got emotions buried under so much layers of concrete, I’m just not ready to open that up,” he said. Instead, he just wanted to pal around with Kimbal. After watching a SpaceX launch on their computers and goofing around in Boulder, they got bored and took Elon’s plane to Austin. There they played Elon’s favorite new video-game obsession, Polytopia, and binge-watched Cobra Kai, a Netflix series based on the Karate Kid movie. In the show, the characters from the original movie were now in their late forties, like Elon and Kimbal, with kids that were the age of the Musk kids. “It hit home to both of us, because it has one super-empathetic person, played by Ralph Macchio, and the other person is the non-empathetic one,” Kimbal says. “They’re both struggling with their own challenges with their father figure and also with how to be father figures to their own children.” The experience was cathartic, even without an Ayahuasca ceremony. “We were like two kids again,” Kimbal says. “It was beautiful, the best time ever. We never thought we’d ever get one of those weeks again in our lives.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv12dqrxyx31z2r9adc6knpk)) - He had always believed that Tesla’s design engineers needed to be located right next to the assembly line, rather than allowing manufacturing to be done at a remote location. That way, engineers could get instant feedback on how to design innovations that would both improve the car and make it easier to manufacture. This was particularly true for a completely new car and manufacturing process. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv117xjqfr25kgas6r8efp4s)) - There were occasional moments of amusement. They stumbled across the list of words that were automatically prevented from being trending topics on Twitter. When they got to the word “turdburger,” Musk started laughing so hard that he fell to the floor wheezing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11s052rfgqwgpph6ry66k3)) - One Christmas tradition that Kimbal and Christiana had was to ask everyone to reflect on a question. This year it was “What regrets do you have?” “My main regret,” Elon answered, “is how often I stab myself in the thigh with a fork, how often I shoot my own feet and stab myself in the eye.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11ssk5qjq9rfhamnxb3fck)) - Griffin was the most easygoing extrovert of the Musk family. As a freshman at an Ivy League college, he was dealing with the animosity directed at his father. In talking about himself, he is very deferential and humble, but he did say, almost apologetically, “I’m sorry this may sound a bit boastful, but I was number one in my class of four hundred fifty in computer science.” He spent a lot of his time, like his father did as a teenager, programming video games. His favorite to play was Elden Ring. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11c112j1b57p80n5fk02c1)) - Musk badly needed to decompress. He was not good at vacations, but a few times each year he would get away for two or three days to Lanai, Hawaii, to stay at one of the homes of his mentor, Larry Ellison, as he had done in April when he decided to buy Twitter. At the end of December, he went there with Grimes and X. Ellison had recently built a domed astronomical observatory on the island with a one-meter mirror telescope weighing three thousand pounds. Musk asked to have it pointed toward Mars. After looking through the eyepiece for a while in silence, he called X over and lifted him up to see. “Look at this,” he said. “This is where you are going to live someday.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv11e6svdjxzy0fcwh6ndf7n)) - “This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks. And when they quit taking risks, their arteries harden. Every year there are more referees and fewer doers.” That’s why America could no longer build things like high-speed rail or rockets that go to the moon. “When you’ve had success for too long, you lose the desire to take risks.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jv10x84xaf3we269sdbe9bmf))