6 Lessons From Elon Musk That We Can Use in Our Lives

Image creator: James Duncan Davidson

Have you heard of Elon Musk? If you don’t know who he is, Elon Musk is the founder of a couple of small companies you may have heard of, Tesla and SpaceX. He is a South African-born American entrepreneur who is one of the most looked up to innovators of the modern world. He has founded many companies including SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, PayPal, Neuralink, OpenAI, and Zip2. What can we learn from a premier innovator of our times? Here are some key lessons that we can learn from him:

Lesson 1: Never Give up! Always keep your goal in mind!

“Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up” — Elon Musk

Tesla was a way Elon Musk wanted to change the car industry’s dependence on fossil fuels Tesla may not have been around today because Elon Musk almost sold the company when it was not doing well as it was scaling to succeed in the market. He did not give up on his company and the goal to make it great, instead, he works hard to make the companies mission possible. Now Tesla is one of the most valuable companies in the world! Staying with your goal is really important because bumps will always occur over time. However, these bumps are not permanent and they will pass. Being persistent is the key to achieving your goal. This is the major differentiator between someone who reaches their goal and someone who is not able to. We often give up too early, but if we stick with the goal there is nothing we can’t do!

2: Commitment is key!

Elon Musk has an incredibly long work schedule where he works 100 hours per week and sometimes has slept in his office. When he was starting up SpaceX and working at Tesla, he worked for long hours on many days and for 7 days a week. Now, I do not recommend working as much as Elon Musk, unless you want to have a headache 😂. However, he is demonstrating that being committed to what you do, will help you achieve success. It is not only enough to make small progress towards your goals but you need to make constant progress over time. While being committed to your work is very important, it is equally important to have a work-life balance. Although Elon Musk earlier did not believe in a work-life balance, it is important to make time for the people around you and give some time for you to reset.

3: Focus on your dreams, not on the odds

Elon Musk has created many large companies that have changed the direction of humanity. When Elon Musk started his companies, they seemed like an impossible dream that won’t be a reality. For example, SpaceX’s mission is to build a human colony on Mars. That seems like an impossible dream, but it is not stopping Elon Musk from working today to build the technologies to reach that goal. This is not just Elon Musk, but many other people who have changed the world do things that seemed impossible to achieve in the past. Whenever we have a dream to accomplish something great, we should not look to see if it possible but to see what are the first steps. If it is something that you truly believe in, then it can become a reality with determination and perseverance.

4: Build your Tree!

“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.” — Elon Musk

Elon Musk has an amazingly large knowledge/skill base that he has built up through many years. He describes getting knowledge as like a tree where you first get the basic high-level knowledge. After learning the high-level knowledge, then you should learn more complex details about it. We want to build up knowledge in multiple different areas because it allows us to combine our knowledge. This results in better thinking to handle complex challenges compared to just knowing a lot about one topic that narrows the approach to problem-solving. As is the saying that innovation happens at the boundaries of knowledge fields.

5: Personality > Talent

“My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.” — Elon Musk

Many people fall into the trap of trying to build their skills and talents rather than focusing on how they are as a person. Building your personality to the best it can be has a larger impact than what you are good at. Most people want to be around people who are supportive, kind, and have “a good heart”. Let’s imagine you have to choose a roommate or a partner to work with. There are two people you can choose from: a person who is kind and is going to help you out or a person who is smart but going to yell and be rude to you. Most of us would probably choose the first person. We should shape ourselves to be the person we would want to be around. Why would we want ourselves to be the person we don’t want to be?

How do we implement this in our life?

The main way to implement this lesson in your life is to self reflect on what is the person you want to be. Now compare this to how you are right now. See how you can become the person you want to be? This can be done by trying out that personality. If you want to be more positive in your day, try to practice it in your life. As you practice your personality, you will start to unconsciously start to transform into the personality you desire.

6: Question yourself constantly

“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.” — Elon Musk

Improving ourselves allows us to be the person we want to be and improve our skills and mindsets. The best way to improve on yourself is to understand how you can personally do better. It is important to reflect after performing a task or a project to see where you can improve. It is equally important to get feedback from your team and peers. If you can understand what are the places you can work on, you know how to make yourself better. It is also really important to act on where you can improve on along with understanding them.

One of the Greatest Activators

Elon Musk has truly become one of the most influential people of the modern world. He has pushed humanity further in space exploration, technology, and much more by being one of the greatest activators. He has also motivated so many people through his lessons from his life. His mindsets and thoughts about people truly help him become the person he is. It is really exciting to see what Elon Musk will accomplish in the future and how he will push humanity!

Nivan is a 14-year-old Artificial Intelligence developer looking to use technology to help solve problems in the world. He is currently building a company called Lemonaid which is a platform that connects teens with organizations that are in need of help with volunteer/intern recruitment. Send me an email at nivangujral@gmail.com if you would like to further discuss this article or just talk.