Brief note: This was originally intended to be a short email – but it grew in the telling.

Marc Andreessen was recently on the How I Write podcast, and explained all of his best writing came from a place of anger and frustration.

This newsletter has been my attempt to replicate that. This newsletter is not me lecturing about Elon Musk – it’s me explaining my frustration at myself for failing to get to where I want to be. I believe that the lessons contained below may be the solution for myself – and for anyone who wants to do ambitious things.

I hope you enjoy.

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I'm about half-way through the incredible biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. I've read some books on Musk before, including the Ashlee Vance bio, but the Isaacson book has been a cut above the rest.

Elon Musk is divisive – some people love him unconditionally and others think he’s a sign of everything wrong with Capitalism. Whatever your thoughts on him, we can all learn from a self-made billionaire who has reshaped entire industries and changed the trajectory of the world.

(Before anyone comes at me, he scores an 8/10 on Forbes Self-made scale and the rumours that his family owned an Emerald Mine in South-Africa or that he was bankrolled by his abusive father have been proven to be patently untrue.)

My goal in this newsletter is not to cast moral judgements – rather, conduct a brief case study of success.

I’ll complete a more comprehensive summary when I finish the book but for now, I want to share a few lessons that I’ve taken away already.

Rules for Rocket Building.

As far as I know, most people on this list don’t have plans for multi-planetary exploration or rocket building (I say most because I am aware of the exceptions), but the rules Elon uses for it can be applied to any project.

1.   Question every Cost.

Musk famously questioned every cost and requirement involved in constructing his rockets. If it was truly necessary, he had no qualms about keeping it – but if he thought there was a workaround, he would test it, and if it held, keep it.

Question every assumption, step, cost, requirement, and expectation in your own life. Keep what is solid – and discard what doesn’t have substance.

2.   Have a Maniacal Sense of Urgency.

“A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle” – Elon Musk.

Musk insisted on borderline impossible (and sometimes outright impossible) deadlines in all things, even when they weren’t necessary.This urgency is a key to SpaceX’s success.

Those who are urgent to learn and succeed will keep a pace that others would consider insane – but as Derek Siver’s says, there’s no speed limit to life and the standard pace is for chumps.

Don’t let people dictate slower paces to you. If you want to pursue something and you actually want to achieve it, you need a deadline. Unrealistic deadlines may not always be hit (although, sometimes we can shock ourselves by doing so) but they allow us to move faster since they counter Parkinson’s Law (a task extends to fill the time allocated to it).

3.   Learn by Failing.

“Musk took an iterative approach to design. Rockets and engines would be quickly prototyped, tested, blown up, revised and tried again, until something worked. Move fast, blow things up, repeat.” – Walter Isaacson.

A founding SpaceX employee summarised the process by saying “It’s not how well you avoid problems. It’s how fast you figure out what the problem is and fix it.”

Most of what we’re doing isn’t rocket science, but we make the mistake of letting problems lead us into inaction. We don’t know how to grow an audience, so we don’t write or make videos. We don’t know how to advertise, so we don’t launch our product. We don’t know the publishing process, so we don’t write our novel. We don’t the best exercises, so we don’t workout.

That’s stupid. We should try to avoid stupid mistakes where possible – but we should take an iterative approach to life. Experimentation and Persistence should be our values when trying something – because keeping those values and combining them over the long-term, all but guarantee success (while living without them, all but guarantee failure.)

4.   Improvise.

One of the things that sets Elon apart from most of us, is his absolute belief that every situation is salvageable. This belief makes success far easier and reduces a lot of stress.

That old school belief that in adversity is the seed of greater success is something he demonstrates as true constantly – being spat on and insulted when trying to buy Russian rockets led him to build his own, launch SpaceX, and change the cost structure of rockets forever.

This ties into the above step. Musk was willing to improvise and try new things – even if things literally blew up while doing it. Sometimes his gambles failed, but the winners more than made up for the losers.

Do It All.

Yesterday, I had an idea for yet another project I want to launch. The idea came after a throwaway line in a fiction book I was reading. I loved the idea – but I also knew that I have 10+ projects I’m planning on building over the next twelve months. I had no idea where I would fit this in.

Then however, I thought about what I’d been reading about Elon. The way that when there was an idea he believed in, no matter how stretched for resources or improbable the odds of success, he would do it. So, I bought the domain and have added the idea into my upcoming projects list – updates to come.

Now, it’s obvious if you want to do a lot of things in your life, it’s going to take a lot of effort. The question you need to ask yourself for each project / idea / goal / undertaking: Is this worth the effort to me?

Everything you do is going to take effort at some point – but for somethings, the payoff is worth far more than the cost of the effort. It depends on each individual, but finding the things you’re willing to invest the most effort into will always pay off.

The question that naturally arises about Musk, and his massive number of companies and projects, is how does he fit it all in? How does he do it all?

Musk – who claims to have never read a time management book – has four key components to his efficiency and effectiveness:

1.   5-Minute Blocks.

Elon famously breaks his time down into 5-minute blocks when working on projects. I’ve found this technique extremely helpful when trying to rush through university work. I’ll break down an essay or reading into 5-minute chunks, and rush through them, shifting to the next the moment my timer goes off.

2.   Serial-Tasking.

Walter Isaacson spoke on the Lex Fridman podcast about Musk’s method of working. He corrected his previous statement that Musk was a multi-tasker, instead he says that Musk is a “serial-tasker”. Now, to be honest, I had no clue at all what that was. I knew there was uni-tasking and multi-tasking, but Serial-tasking appears to be a very happy medium for working on multiple projects.

Multi-tasking is ruthlessly ineffective, especially when doing complex work. The joke is that multi-tasking is doing several things poorly. Serial-tasking on the other hand improves focus, reduces distractions, and brings about high-level  effectiveness.

Basically, you write down all the tasks you have for your projects. You work on one with intense focus (covered below) either until completion or until your timer works out, you then take a short break (also covered below), and then start on your next task. There is no mixing of tasks like multi-tasking – instead, you successively uni-task on a bunch of different projects in a row.

3.   Intense Focus.

For Serial-tasking to work, and to be honest to achieve any level of success on a project, you need the ability of intense focus.

Intense focus is the ability to not only drown out the external world – which you can do by secluding yourself, listening to the correct music, eradicating distractions, and working on a timer – but also the ability to stop your internal dialogue on anything but what you’re working on. You can keep a piece of paper next to you and write down rabbit-holes to go down later, but you have to have your mind fully present on what’s in front of you.

Intense focus, the art of absolute concentration, is a skill that must be developed through repetition – so start getting those reps in.

4.   Mental Breaks.

Perhaps surprisingly at first, and obvious after deeper thought, is how much mental breaks Elon works into his schedule. He does this by reading (great), firing off problematic tweets (not so great), and playing strategy games (great).

If you want to be able to push yourself between projects and maintain a high-level of effectiveness, you need to keep mentally sharp. Musk famously loves The Battle of Polytopia strategy game (I’ve recently gotten into it, and it’s amazing) and according to Isaacson, uses it like a “mental palate cleanser” between intense tasks. (I played a game between writing and editing this newsletter).

The key is to find something that draws in your complete focus and is mentally rejuvenating (I’ve found Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to be a perfect example of this – it’s impossible to think about anything else while someone is trying to strangle you). This means that scrolling Instagram reels, YouTube Shorts, or TikTok’s doesn’t count – you’ll lose track of time for sure, but you’re sort of just frying your dopamine system instead of increasing your mental sharpness.

All of the above methods enable Musk to work on a wide variety of projects, and they’ll enable you to do the same if you learn to apply them. The fact is, if a potential project is important to us, we shouldn’t just give up on it because our plates seem full – which brings us to my next point.

Think About Risk Differently.

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.” – Elon Musk.

Elon Musk almost went broke when he had started Tesla and SpaceX. He had poured all the money from his PayPal sale into the two companies. Tesla was bleeding cash and still hadn’t put out a car, SpaceX had experienced three failed rocket launches. Both companies were literally weeks away from bankruptcy.

Everyone advised Musk to shut down one of the businesses and use the very little capital he had left to give the other business a fighting chance. He refused. The odds were stacked against him, but he believed in the importance of the world having Electric Cars and humanity becoming multi-planetary. In his own words, the companies were like kids to him – and he refused to pick which kid to sacrifice.

This decision, which wreaked havoc on Musk’s health and finances in the short term, paid off. Today, the two companies’ have a combined valuation of roughly a trillion dollars.  Tesla rebooted the electric car movement, and SpaceX has helped bring about the beginnings of a new space age.

The lesson here is one that deserves to be carved into our consciousness: we need to re-evaluate risk.

To Elon, the risk of not having electric cars or humanity not going multi-planetary, was far greater than the risk of losing the personal fortune he had sacrificed so much to accumulate.

For myself, I need to take heed of this lesson: I know that I want to be an entrepreneur. The risk of never starting any projects and never becoming one is far greater than any risks associated with starting a project.

For the person who wants to be in a relationship, the risk of never meeting anyone is far greater than the risk of rejection of asking someone out.

For the person who wants to get into shape, the risk of dying early from preventable diseases is far greater than the risk of embarrassment from starting an exercise and diet regime.

Once you understand what the most dangerous risk is, you understand that all other risks are relatively minor.

To the aspiring writer, the risk of never publishing a book is greater than the risk of criticism of your work.

Think about what is most important to you. Figure out the real risk – and let the other minor risks be something you force yourself past.

Just Get Started.

Elon Musk had no plan when moved to Canada at 17 – he had barely researched it, but he knew that he could not afford to stagnate in his abusive situation in South Africa. He touched down in Canada with $2000 and a suitcase full of books and figured it out.

Elon Musk had no experience to take on the banking industry with, but he read a ton of books and launched X.com, which became PayPal and netted him over a hundred million dollars when the company was sold to eBay.

Elon Musk once again, had no right to think he could build the first successful American car company since Ford or build the first successful private space company. But he read deeply, studied the areas, and made it work.

Elon Musk has the habit of action. He would just get started on projects and ideas, even with no clear path forward, and make it work.

How many projects are we waiting to start? How many goals are we waiting to pursue? How many dreams are we waiting to chase?

No progress comes in waiting. Get started and figure it out along the way. Have faith in yourself that you can – because if you really are determined, you’ll crack it.

The Most Important: Work.

Here’s the thing, all the above are crucial strategies to enhance whatever it is that you want to do in life. But there’s one factor to Musk that even his rivals and critics will compliment: His work-ethic.

The guy has put in hundred-hour workweeks for decades on end. When he started his first company, Zip2, he would work every waking hour and then sleep under his desk. He repeated this routine until the company was sold. When Tesla built their first factory, he made sure that his desk had a pillow under it for the times when he would sleep there.

Now, the obvious caveat is this is unhealthy and probably unnecessary for those of us who aren’t trying to solve global problems on insane deadlines. The lesson remains though: We need to work for it.

To paraphrase Ben Horowitz, there are no silver bullets – we are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets. We are all guilty – me probably more than most – of searching for those short-cuts and silver bullets. The fact is though, no matter what it is we want to achieve, there’s a mountain of work between us and it. Those that learn to respect and enjoy that process are the ones that prosper.

As explored above, the standard pace is for chumps. If something is important to you, you should be obsessive about it. If you want to learn a skill, why only do it an hour a week, why not obsess and work it with every spare moment until you’ve mastered it. If you want to launch a project, why chip away at it slowly, when instead you can throw yourself into it until you’ve completed it.

If you’re not making the progress you want in an area of life – odds are, you’re either not working hard enough at it or you’re not working smart enough. Take the guesswork out of it: work relentlessly on it and apply these strategies and more to increase the effectiveness of your output.

The obvious criticism about this is that to live well requires balance – and that’s true. But you can barbell strategy it. Have 90% of your time being perfectly balanced, but when you’re pursuing something important, have a period of imbalance. Few strategies beat the strategy of all-out intensity.

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Those are just some of the lessons I’ve taken away from Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson – there are several others that I’ll cover in upcoming newsletters.

I ended up cutting out several other sections from this newsletter to make it easier to read and digest.

I really hope that even those in my audience who I know have a strong dislike for Elon can learn from these lessons, and I selfishly hope that I can take my own advice.

Please let me know what you liked – or any dissenting thought / critiques.

Until next week,

Zachariah.