How Does Elon Musk Work Efficiently While Gaming and Listening to Reports? | [Jingwei’s Low-key Sharing]

How does Elon Musk work efficiently while playing games and listening to reports?

Playing games while listening to subordinates’ reports, Elon Musk’s multi-threaded working ability is astonishing. Earlier, Musk released a video on X in which he was playing Diablo IV while listening to reports from SpaceX engineers. Multithreaded work is the norm for Musk. Subordinates say he often handles more than a dozen things at the same time. Jensen Huang also mentioned that Musk’s achievements are unique. What others accomplish in four years, he only takes 19 days. From electric vehicles to commercial aerospace, Musk aims to save human civilization. His life is busy and full of drama. How does he maintain an efficient state and be full of energy? This article explores Musk’s time management methods with extremely high efficiency.

1. An extremely efficient schedule
American venture capitalist Marc Andreessen reveals Musk’s secret of high efficiency and mentions that Musk asked Parag the soul-searching question of “what did you get done this week?”. Musk makes a weekly schedule and rejects traditional timetables. His work schedule is extremely strict. He works more than 80 to 100 hours per week and uses the “5-minute rule time” management method. Each time block is assigned a specific task, such as replying to emails, eating, and arranging meetings. After waking up, Musk first checks his emails to handle urgent work emails, then takes his kids to school. He allocates the least amount of time to each task and uses deadlines to maintain the highest efficiency. There are two important principles of time boxing: what matters is not when to do it but how long it takes; manage priorities rather than chronological order. Despite a tight schedule, Musk emphasizes flexibility to adapt to emergencies. He also supports reducing meeting times and prefers small, focused gatherings. The “5-minute rule time” can filter work priorities and help founders effectively organize tasks and avoid wasting time switching between different tasks.

2. Simplify processes and communicate directly with engineers
Musk does not set up multiple layers of hierarchy. He penetrates the company hierarchy and discusses directly with the person responsible for things. He tends to let engineers take leadership roles and make the company a company dominated by engineer culture. He says he is an innovative engineer and wants to equip the company with almost all engineers. He personally participates in production lines and laboratories to understand every technical system. He goes to each company every week to find bottlenecks and communicate directly with engineers to quickly find solutions. The company simplifies processes and does not have too many levels and processes. The employee handbook requires communication to follow the shortest path rather than the administrative management chain. Any manager who forces communication through the administrative management system should resign automatically. In this way, the company’s development speed and response speed to crises are fast, like a race between a rabbit and a tortoise.

3. The “five-step work method” of rapid iteration and tolerance for errors
Musk has accomplished many feats. The secret may lie in his “five-step work method”. The specific steps are as follows:
1. Make the requirements less stupid: When making a request, attach the requester. Question the requests made by smart people and improve the requirements to make them less stupid.
2. Try to delete some processes: Do your best to delete some parts and processes. If less than 10% of what was deleted is added back in the end, it means not enough was deleted. Each necessary part and process should be assigned a corresponding responsible person rather than a department.
3. Simplify or optimize: Simplify and optimize the design to avoid optimizing things that shouldn’t exist.
4. Speed up cycle time: Speed up cycle time, but complete the other three things first to avoid wasting energy where it shouldn’t be accelerated.
5. Automation: An important part of automation is to delete in-process testing after diagnosing problems. If the product has a high acceptance rate at the end of the production line, there is no need for in-process testing.

This work method also has other inferences: Technical managers should have practical experience; avoid “everyone is good”; it’s okay to make mistakes, but it’s not okay to not admit mistakes; don’t ask the team to do things you wouldn’t do yourself; to solve problems, conduct in-depth research and communicate across levels; when recruiting, hire people with the right attitude.

4. First principles: Thinking about problems from the most essential aspects
The “first principles thinking” has been deeply rooted in Musk’s methods of problem-solving and innovation. The application has three steps: zeroing, deconstructing, and reconstructing. Musk encourages teams to look at problems from the bottom up and not rely on analogies or existing solutions. He uses this method in industries such as space exploration, automotive engineering, and renewable energy. For example, when founding SpaceX, he reduced the cost of rocket launches through first principles. In the field of electric vehicles, he challenges the limitations of battery technology