Elon Musk - Habits and Principles

“Well, I do think there’s a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning. Generally, I think there are — what I mean by that is, boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations.”

First Principles thinking is actively questioning your assumptions (things you think you “know”) about a given problem, then creating solutions and knowledge from scratch. Whereas, reasoning by analogy is solving problems based on best practices that are generally accepted by the majority of people.

Most of the following principles have been defined by David Dagen, author of Elon Musk- Top 10 Business Lessons Through an Inspiring Life of a Visionary Entrepreneur: The Man With a Quest to Change the World’s Future.

“Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that… you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.”

Elon Musk is known for being very productive. He is the CEO of three rapidly growing companies that require a lot of his time, Neuralink, Tesla, and SpaceX. Along with working a lot, Musk also works effectively. Here are some of his productivity hacks.