The secret to Elon Musk's productivity | Walter Isaacson and Lex Fridman

one of the many things that comes to mind that Ben Franklin is incredible time management um is there something you could say about Ben Franklin and about Steve Jobs I think interesting with Elon is that he as you write uh run six companies seven depends how you count star link is its own thing I don't know um what can you say about these people in terms of time management well musk is in a league of his own and the way he does it first of all yeah Steve Jobs had to run Pixar and Apple for

a while but musk every couple of hours is switching his mindset from how to implant the neural link chip and what will the robot that implants it in the brain look like and how fast can we make it move and then the heat shield on the Raptor or switching to human imitation machine learning full self drive on the night that the Twitter board uh agreed to the deal this is huge around the world I'm sure you remember like musk buys Twitter it wouldn't win the deal closed it was when the Twitter accepted his offer and

I thought okay but then he went to Boca Chica to South Texas and spent time fixating on if I remember correctly a valve in the Raptor engine that had a methane leak issue and what were the possible ways to fix it and all the engineers in that room I assume are thinking about this guy just bought Twitter should we say something and he's like and then he goes with Kimball to a roadside joint uh in Brownsville and just sits in the front and listens to music with nobody noticing really him being there one of the

things that one of his strengths and sort of weaknesses in a way is in a given day he'll Focus serially sequentially on many different things he will worry about uh uploading video onto x.com or the payment system and then immediately switch over to some issue with the FAA giving a permit for Starship or with how to deal with starlink and the CIA and when he's focused on any of these things you cannot distract him it's not like he's also thinking about I'm dealing with starlink but I've got to also worry about the Tesla decision on

the new 25 000 car now he'll in between these sessions process information then let off steam and for better or worse he lets off steam by either playing a friend in politopia or fire off some tweets which is often not a healthy thing but it's a release for him and he doesn't I once said he was a great multitasker and that was a mistake people corrected me he's a Serial Tasker which means focus is intensely on a task for an hour almost has a what do they call it at restaurants where they give you a

palette cleanser yeah he does some palette cleanser with polytopia yeah and then focuses on the next task I mean is there some wisdom about time management that you can draw from that there are some things that these people do and you say okay I can be that way I can be more Curious I can question every Rule and regulation I I just don't think anybody to try to emulate musk time management style because it takes a certain set of teams you know how to deal with everything else other than the thing he's focusing on and

a certain mind that can shift just like his moods can shift uh you and I go through Transitions and also if I'm thinking about what I'm going to say on this podcast I'm also thinking about the email my daughter just sent about a house that she's looking you know and I'm I'm multitasking he doesn't actually do that he single tasks sequentially with a focus that's hardcore I don't know I think there's wisdom to draw from that to like first of all he makes me Ben Franklin makes me feel that way that there's a lot of

hours in the day there's a lot of minutes in the day like there's no excuse not to get a lot done and that requires just an extreme Focus extreme focusing like an urgency I think the fierce urgency that drives him is important and it's sometimes gend up like I say the fierce urgency of getting to Mars and on a Friday night at the launch pad in Boca Chica at 10 pm there are only a few people working because it's a Friday night they're not supposed to launch for another eight months and he orders The Surge

he says I want 200 people here by tomorrow working on this pad we have to have a fierce sense of urgency or we will never get to Mars that sense of urgency you know is also a vibrancy that's like really taking on life fully I mean that to me this the lesson is like even the mundane can be full of this just richness and like you just have to really uh take it in intensely it's like the switching enables that kind of intensity because most of us can't hold that intense than any one tasks for

a prolonged period of time maybe that's also a lesson right and I guess it goes back to also know who you are meaning there are people who can focus intensely and there are people who can see patterns across many things look Leonardo da Vinci he was not all that focused he was easily distracted it's why he has more unfinished paintings and finished paintings in his Canon yeah um but his ability to see patterns across nature and to in some ways process procrastinate be distracted that helped him some but musk is in not that way and

there every few months as a new surge you don't know where it'll be but you'll be on solar roofs and all of a sudden we'll have a surge and there has to be you know 100 solar roofs built or this has to be done by tomorrow or make a Starship dome by Dawn and Surge and do it um and there are people who are built that way it is inspiring but also let's appreciate you know that there are people who can be really good uh but uh also can savor the success Savor the moment Savor

the quiet sometimes must big failing is he can't save her the moment or success and that's the flip side of Hardcore intensity