By AceTrainerGreen
in Personal Development -- [Main],
For the ones reading this in the future, I'll copy-paste my other extended posts onto this main post, so you don't have to look for it in the next pages.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/business/elon-musk-interview-tesla.html
According to an interview from the New York Times this year, Elon Musk has reported to "work" 120 hours a week. To put this in perspective, that's 3x longer than a 40-hour work week, 71.43% of your 168 hour week (or assuming if you get 8 hours of sleep, he works more than your 112 hours awake).
From the same interview,
There are also many complaints inside SpaceX and Tesla's employees. Many are incredibly overworked. There are many articles describing these conditions. Related Videos: Leo's Thoughts on Elon Musk and Overworking (no particular order): Personal Thoughts I sometimes feel like you HAVE to work 60, 80, 80+ hours a week to be professionally successful. However, life purpose, although incredibly important, it should not be the entirety of your life. There is much more to life than work. Leo's video on workaholism strikes me to my core because I am guilty of being a workaholic. He stated that the core cause of my work is because I ultimately do not have value to my internal self. Paradoxically, the second video I referenced states that there is no meaning in life. I want to believe my goals are similar to Elon's. I want to become a medical entrepreneur and help find ways to cure diseases such as the myriad types of cancers. In a way, I want to be written down in history. In order to do this, working 40 hours a week is not "fast enough". Then again, there is the argument for burn out. Ironically, I invest so much time trying to extend life whereas I am not entirely enjoying life at the present. I've done some research into the 8-hour workday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day This is preliminary research, but it's interesting how many entrepreneurs work way beyond 40 hours a week. The main question is: Is it possible to achieve Elon-Musk-like professional success or at least an order of magnitude less by working 40 hours a week? Some other questions on my mind: What are your thoughts on working 4 days of 10 hours and having 3 days off? I'm interested in making philosophy videos as a hobby for YouTube. I genuinely enjoy it. If I put in 20 hours a week, is that a 60 hour work week? Or is that saying, "I play video games for 4 hours a day after work." How do I get rid of my desire for wealth, fame, and power? I like to think my intentions are noble as it seeks to cure the multiple facets of cancer. Helping people is a higher priority than this, but the three are fantastic to have if you want global change. Leo talks about this in the pictures I quoted. There is a difference between contributions to humanity than one's care of their consciousness. Do you think if Elon focused on one company instead of multiple (SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, Hyperloop, OpenAI, Neuralink, Boring Company), he could be much more productive? Thank you. RESPONSE #2 Thank you for your short answer @Leo Gura. There's no need for you to comment further because you have already spoken much about it on earlier threads and your videos. It's good to know your position still stands. 2,000+ years from now, when future civilizations will look at us, will they look at Michael Jackson's songs the same way as a source of wisdom the same way we interpret ancient Roman and Greek scholars? I've done much more research on the topic. It's taken me two days of intense learning. First, it was through Leo's videos and posts on the forum. Second, it was by reading a bunch of other content about it elsewhere. The conclusion is that one must work 40 hours a week. Resources that Further Convinced Me: 1. Stanford economist John Pencanvel's 2014 analysis He's no ordinary economist. His resume is 13 pages long! https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/people/cv/3695-vitae2015.august.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf - Official Study https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2014/12/09/proof-that-you-should-get-a-life - A summarized read " 2. This paper from the US federal government https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-143/pdfs/2004-143.pdf 3. This article - the importance of delegation & video https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/elon-musk-is-wrong-you-can-definitely-change-world-on-40-hours-a-week.html It's obvious advice. If you want to "work 120 hours a week", hire two people to work 40 hours a week each. SpaceX is arguably easier to handle because Elon has a second-in-command, Gwynne Shotwell, to help. Unfortunately, for Tesla, there is no second-in-command. Delegation is vital. Elon runs multiple companies. There's SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, OpenAI, Hyperloop, Neuralink, and Boring. Exclude OpenAI and Hyperloop because he stepped down on the first and is sometimes involved with the second. Even then, Elon has reported having been working 120 hours a week at Tesla. What about the others? The Giga Factory is still being built, Neuralink has incredible progress, and construction was approved for Boring. There's a lot of delegation going behind-the-scenes. --- 4. Now, there's also a video inside of that article from before. It's a woman stating ten reasons she stopped overworking. Quality over quantity - work smarter versus harder Sleep matters - Jeff Bezos sleeps 8 hours a day You suck when it counts. Imagine being sleepy and having clouded judgment during a presentation? Your mood is a buzzkill. I noticed that when I work 60+ hours a week, I become a jerk. Judgment is impaired — similar reasons for lack of sleep. Setting a bad example - If you are working 80+ hours a week, your employees will be "inspired" to operate a similar amount of hours. You create a culture of irritated, sleepy, and clouded people who also have family problems for always working all the time. There's an infinite amount of tasks you can always do. Hurts relationships - You're a dick when you overwork. Hurts health - Similar to sleep, not getting enough exercise, not eating correctly, not developing your spiritual side It's not that important - deadlines are flexible 5, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/23/elon-musk-120-hour-working-week-tesla#comments At this point, my mind has been convinced a 40-hour work week is what's needed. Some questions at the back of my head: Regarding my life purpose, I may have to rethink if a Ph.D. & MD is worth it. A Ph.D. may have to satisfy. Is it possible to drop the double major of computer science and biology? Can a minor in biology be sufficient? Research European Union's, especially Germany's work-life balance I can only study for 6 hours at a time. That's with 10-minute breaks every 50 minutes and a 30-minute break every 4 hours. I'd ideally like to be an academic student for 40 hours a week. There's a lot of great news about working 10 hours for four days. I wonder if it's possible to do the same with being a student. For myself, studying is a lot more mentally draining than physical exercise. RESPONSE #3 @John Lula Zen. It reminds me of several things. 1. Butterfly Effect 2. It's A Wonderful Life - If you travel back in time and murder someone that would turn 80 years old, the present will look noticeably different. 3. @kingroboto It didn't take long 40 minutes for the first post; 30 minutes for the second. All I did was copy-paste the notes I took. For the note-taking, it's taken well over 8+ hours. I don't mind making "long posts." I tend to write 20+ pages. This is nothing. I don't care if no one reads it. I'm just displaying my thoughts, so other people can help me navigate my thinking. You don't have to read all of it. @kingroboto Probably. There's a concept in history called the Great Man Theory. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Great_man_theory It's an exciting read. Your comment made me research about the topic further. At first, I only knew about it in a dictionary definition sense. I spent three hours reading about it and taking notes. The Great Man theory deserves its thread, to be honest. Here are the notes I took recently. Sharing this for the sake of sharing new information I learned. One particular insight would have to be the forces of nature vs. nurture. When I look at Elon Musk, it seems that he's the only person who is single-handedly running all of the companies; however, that's false. There are a lot of factors going behind-the-scenes. For example, Elon's work relies heavily on subsidies from the government as well as public-sector funded technology. Perhaps, the Great Man Theory is like standing on the shoulders of giants. Without external forces such as geography, technology, socioeconomic status, Elon would not exist. Then again, it gives an interesting question: If Elon never lived, would these advances have been possible? As I learn more about myself through your teachings, other resources, and my personal experience, I agree. Hard work and success does not correlate with authentic being, yet many tend to do so otherwise. At the back of my mind, even despite all of this learning about workaholism and the dangerous consequences of it, I still feel pushed to work hard. Regarding your last sentence, it reminds me of playing a challenging video game. When I keep dying at a boss battle, I tend to rage quit and do something else for a while. I don't think about the game, but when I come back to it the next day, my mind seems to have figured out a way to beat it. I've done some reading on this, and I find it incredible how the subconscious mind is capable of generating insights. Active vs. diffused thinking is vital. Your comment reminds me of this post I read on Wall Street Oasis. The website is for people who want to work at Wall Street, hence the name. Within the notorious culture of working 80+ hours a week, there are a lot of threads about burnout. One particular thread I remember fondly of would be a person quitting his job as an analyst and instead of working as a professional pianist. https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/life-after-investment-banking Inspirational. It also reminds me of Gary Vaynerchuk's advice on careers. He stated, " I've tried looking into burnout into other careers. On Wall Street Oasis, the most commonly recommended advice is to take a vacation, so you can get perspective. When you're in the grind every day, it's hard to think of yourself outside of the box. @NoSelfSelfI'm not very materialistic. If I were rich, the most expensive item I would be a gaming computer and a Tesla. Haha, The goal is to use fame, power, and wealth to help people. @Serotoninluv Thank you for your comment. It's good to know that you are speaking from experience. It's similar to Bill Gates. Instead of using his wealth for his selfish ambitions, he's using his tens of billions of dollars into fixing poverty worldwide. Yeah, that's what I mean in response to @NoSelfSelf @Joseph Maynor For myself, passion is difficult to determine. I have many interests; however, these tend to be intense and last for several months. Recently, I became very obsessed with uploading video game footage for my YouTube channel. I gained 800 followers and 200,000+ views. It's something I would spend 8+ hours on every day, and I would look forward to it. Recently, I have been feeling burnt out. Outside of the small fame, it makes me realize that passion alone is not sufficient. I have many interests, but interests do not always mean passion. When I think about it, there are several areas that I routinely come back and several processes that allow me to enter flow. It's good to know that I've documented this. Some reoccurring interests would have to be philosophy, psychology, and politics. I tend to overthink about ideas. The processes that allow me to enter the state of flow would be anything related to creating such as writing and video making. Outside of this altogether, when work becomes play and you "work" for 12 hours, you also tend to neglect other aspects of your life. Going back to my little YouTube interest, I had incredible fun for 2.5 months; however, I ignored many other aspects of my life during this time such as sleep, fitness, and even prolonging excretion urges. @Outer Not sure if you're sarcastic. @aurum I think you're fine. I think the problem with Elon is that he's so incredibly passionate about his work or his play that he's neglecting other facets in his life such as his health and family. I see multiple problems. 1) Your life and identity revolved around work. 2) The more work you did, the more work is created. It's never-ending. 3) Your subconscious fear of not being good enough. It reminds me of Leo's video on workaholism. It makes me wonder if hanging out with incredibly professional successful people is more or less a good thing. Their ability to accomplish rubs off on you; however, at the same time, it also rubs off a culture of workaholism and that it's okay to place less time on family, friends, and other aspects in one's life. For example, what would happen if you worked in Silicon Valley where everyone is overworked? ------------------------- Thank you for all the responses and thank you for the individuals who read all of it. I have more insights to think. I wasn't able to do much research about the questions I was asking about on my last post; however, I did research Great Man Theory and responded to these responses. I like to return to almost all of them because it helps facilitate my thinking. A question I have: What do you think of Gary Vaynerchuk preaching workaholism? Topics to Research: - Butterfly Effect - Silicon Valley & Workaholism - I tend to be very indecisive. Is my personality even suited for entrepreneurship? There's Warren Buffet who researches immensely into a company before making any moves.
There are also many complaints inside SpaceX and Tesla's employees. Many are incredibly overworked. There are many articles describing these conditions. Related Videos: Leo's Thoughts on Elon Musk and Overworking (no particular order): Personal Thoughts I sometimes feel like you HAVE to work 60, 80, 80+ hours a week to be professionally successful. However, life purpose, although incredibly important, it should not be the entirety of your life. There is much more to life than work. Leo's video on workaholism strikes me to my core because I am guilty of being a workaholic. He stated that the core cause of my work is because I ultimately do not have value to my internal self. Paradoxically, the second video I referenced states that there is no meaning in life. I want to believe my goals are similar to Elon's. I want to become a medical entrepreneur and help find ways to cure diseases such as the myriad types of cancers. In a way, I want to be written down in history. In order to do this, working 40 hours a week is not "fast enough". Then again, there is the argument for burn out. Ironically, I invest so much time trying to extend life whereas I am not entirely enjoying life at the present. I've done some research into the 8-hour workday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day This is preliminary research, but it's interesting how many entrepreneurs work way beyond 40 hours a week. The main question is: Is it possible to achieve Elon-Musk-like professional success or at least an order of magnitude less by working 40 hours a week? Some other questions on my mind: What are your thoughts on working 4 days of 10 hours and having 3 days off? I'm interested in making philosophy videos as a hobby for YouTube. I genuinely enjoy it. If I put in 20 hours a week, is that a 60 hour work week? Or is that saying, "I play video games for 4 hours a day after work." How do I get rid of my desire for wealth, fame, and power? I like to think my intentions are noble as it seeks to cure the multiple facets of cancer. Helping people is a higher priority than this, but the three are fantastic to have if you want global change. Leo talks about this in the pictures I quoted. There is a difference between contributions to humanity than one's care of their consciousness. Do you think if Elon focused on one company instead of multiple (SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, Hyperloop, OpenAI, Neuralink, Boring Company), he could be much more productive? Thank you. RESPONSE #2 Thank you for your short answer @Leo Gura. There's no need for you to comment further because you have already spoken much about it on earlier threads and your videos. It's good to know your position still stands. 2,000+ years from now, when future civilizations will look at us, will they look at Michael Jackson's songs the same way as a source of wisdom the same way we interpret ancient Roman and Greek scholars? I've done much more research on the topic. It's taken me two days of intense learning. First, it was through Leo's videos and posts on the forum. Second, it was by reading a bunch of other content about it elsewhere. The conclusion is that one must work 40 hours a week. Resources that Further Convinced Me: 1. Stanford economist John Pencanvel's 2014 analysis He's no ordinary economist. His resume is 13 pages long! https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/people/cv/3695-vitae2015.august.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf - Official Study https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2014/12/09/proof-that-you-should-get-a-life - A summarized read " 2. This paper from the US federal government https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-143/pdfs/2004-143.pdf 3. This article - the importance of delegation & video https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/elon-musk-is-wrong-you-can-definitely-change-world-on-40-hours-a-week.html It's obvious advice. If you want to "work 120 hours a week", hire two people to work 40 hours a week each. SpaceX is arguably easier to handle because Elon has a second-in-command, Gwynne Shotwell, to help. Unfortunately, for Tesla, there is no second-in-command. Delegation is vital. Elon runs multiple companies. There's SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, OpenAI, Hyperloop, Neuralink, and Boring. Exclude OpenAI and Hyperloop because he stepped down on the first and is sometimes involved with the second. Even then, Elon has reported having been working 120 hours a week at Tesla. What about the others? The Giga Factory is still being built, Neuralink has incredible progress, and construction was approved for Boring. There's a lot of delegation going behind-the-scenes. --- 4. Now, there's also a video inside of that article from before. It's a woman stating ten reasons she stopped overworking. Quality over quantity - work smarter versus harder Sleep matters - Jeff Bezos sleeps 8 hours a day You suck when it counts. Imagine being sleepy and having clouded judgment during a presentation? Your mood is a buzzkill. I noticed that when I work 60+ hours a week, I become a jerk. Judgment is impaired — similar reasons for lack of sleep. Setting a bad example - If you are working 80+ hours a week, your employees will be "inspired" to operate a similar amount of hours. You create a culture of irritated, sleepy, and clouded people who also have family problems for always working all the time. There's an infinite amount of tasks you can always do. Hurts relationships - You're a dick when you overwork. Hurts health - Similar to sleep, not getting enough exercise, not eating correctly, not developing your spiritual side It's not that important - deadlines are flexible 5, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/23/elon-musk-120-hour-working-week-tesla#comments At this point, my mind has been convinced a 40-hour work week is what's needed. Some questions at the back of my head: Regarding my life purpose, I may have to rethink if a Ph.D. & MD is worth it. A Ph.D. may have to satisfy. Is it possible to drop the double major of computer science and biology? Can a minor in biology be sufficient? Research European Union's, especially Germany's work-life balance I can only study for 6 hours at a time. That's with 10-minute breaks every 50 minutes and a 30-minute break every 4 hours. I'd ideally like to be an academic student for 40 hours a week. There's a lot of great news about working 10 hours for four days. I wonder if it's possible to do the same with being a student. For myself, studying is a lot more mentally draining than physical exercise. RESPONSE #3 @John Lula Zen. It reminds me of several things. 1. Butterfly Effect 2. It's A Wonderful Life - If you travel back in time and murder someone that would turn 80 years old, the present will look noticeably different. 3. @kingroboto It didn't take long 40 minutes for the first post; 30 minutes for the second. All I did was copy-paste the notes I took. For the note-taking, it's taken well over 8+ hours. I don't mind making "long posts." I tend to write 20+ pages. This is nothing. I don't care if no one reads it. I'm just displaying my thoughts, so other people can help me navigate my thinking. You don't have to read all of it. @kingroboto Probably. There's a concept in history called the Great Man Theory. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Great_man_theory It's an exciting read. Your comment made me research about the topic further. At first, I only knew about it in a dictionary definition sense. I spent three hours reading about it and taking notes. The Great Man theory deserves its thread, to be honest. Here are the notes I took recently. Sharing this for the sake of sharing new information I learned. One particular insight would have to be the forces of nature vs. nurture. When I look at Elon Musk, it seems that he's the only person who is single-handedly running all of the companies; however, that's false. There are a lot of factors going behind-the-scenes. For example, Elon's work relies heavily on subsidies from the government as well as public-sector funded technology. Perhaps, the Great Man Theory is like standing on the shoulders of giants. Without external forces such as geography, technology, socioeconomic status, Elon would not exist. Then again, it gives an interesting question: If Elon never lived, would these advances have been possible? As I learn more about myself through your teachings, other resources, and my personal experience, I agree. Hard work and success does not correlate with authentic being, yet many tend to do so otherwise. At the back of my mind, even despite all of this learning about workaholism and the dangerous consequences of it, I still feel pushed to work hard. Regarding your last sentence, it reminds me of playing a challenging video game. When I keep dying at a boss battle, I tend to rage quit and do something else for a while. I don't think about the game, but when I come back to it the next day, my mind seems to have figured out a way to beat it. I've done some reading on this, and I find it incredible how the subconscious mind is capable of generating insights. Active vs. diffused thinking is vital. Your comment reminds me of this post I read on Wall Street Oasis. The website is for people who want to work at Wall Street, hence the name. Within the notorious culture of working 80+ hours a week, there are a lot of threads about burnout. One particular thread I remember fondly of would be a person quitting his job as an analyst and instead of working as a professional pianist. https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/life-after-investment-banking Inspirational. It also reminds me of Gary Vaynerchuk's advice on careers. He stated, " I've tried looking into burnout into other careers. On Wall Street Oasis, the most commonly recommended advice is to take a vacation, so you can get perspective. When you're in the grind every day, it's hard to think of yourself outside of the box. @NoSelfSelfI'm not very materialistic. If I were rich, the most expensive item I would be a gaming computer and a Tesla. Haha, The goal is to use fame, power, and wealth to help people. @Serotoninluv Thank you for your comment. It's good to know that you are speaking from experience. It's similar to Bill Gates. Instead of using his wealth for his selfish ambitions, he's using his tens of billions of dollars into fixing poverty worldwide. Yeah, that's what I mean in response to @NoSelfSelf @Joseph Maynor For myself, passion is difficult to determine. I have many interests; however, these tend to be intense and last for several months. Recently, I became very obsessed with uploading video game footage for my YouTube channel. I gained 800 followers and 200,000+ views. It's something I would spend 8+ hours on every day, and I would look forward to it. Recently, I have been feeling burnt out. Outside of the small fame, it makes me realize that passion alone is not sufficient. I have many interests, but interests do not always mean passion. When I think about it, there are several areas that I routinely come back and several processes that allow me to enter flow. It's good to know that I've documented this. Some reoccurring interests would have to be philosophy, psychology, and politics. I tend to overthink about ideas. The processes that allow me to enter the state of flow would be anything related to creating such as writing and video making. Outside of this altogether, when work becomes play and you "work" for 12 hours, you also tend to neglect other aspects of your life. Going back to my little YouTube interest, I had incredible fun for 2.5 months; however, I ignored many other aspects of my life during this time such as sleep, fitness, and even prolonging excretion urges. @Outer Not sure if you're sarcastic. @aurum I think you're fine. I think the problem with Elon is that he's so incredibly passionate about his work or his play that he's neglecting other facets in his life such as his health and family. I see multiple problems. 1) Your life and identity revolved around work. 2) The more work you did, the more work is created. It's never-ending. 3) Your subconscious fear of not being good enough. It reminds me of Leo's video on workaholism. It makes me wonder if hanging out with incredibly professional successful people is more or less a good thing. Their ability to accomplish rubs off on you; however, at the same time, it also rubs off a culture of workaholism and that it's okay to place less time on family, friends, and other aspects in one's life. For example, what would happen if you worked in Silicon Valley where everyone is overworked? ------------------------- Thank you for all the responses and thank you for the individuals who read all of it. I have more insights to think. I wasn't able to do much research about the questions I was asking about on my last post; however, I did research Great Man Theory and responded to these responses. I like to return to almost all of them because it helps facilitate my thinking. A question I have: What do you think of Gary Vaynerchuk preaching workaholism? Topics to Research: - Butterfly Effect - Silicon Valley & Workaholism - I tend to be very indecisive. Is my personality even suited for entrepreneurship? There's Warren Buffet who researches immensely into a company before making any moves.
- 41 replies