A Day in the Life of Elon Musk - Part 1

• Admin
• Tue Jul 27, 2021

"Nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week." These are the words of multi-billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who runs two of the most innovative companies of current times, Tesla and SpaceX, and juggles travel interviews and a family of five teenage sons daily. It's no secret that Elon Musk's fruitful ventures have been built off the back of hard work, dedication and intelligent decision-making. But what about the details? Wouldn't it be great to see how the most influential man in the world organizes his time and manages to cram everything into a seemingly impossible schedule?

Read on to an insight into a day in the life of Elon Musk.

Morning routine

There is a great divide among business tycoons regarding how much sleep is needed to stay atop their game. Jeff Bezos likes to wake up without an alarm. In contrast, Donald Trump swears by just three to four hours a night. Musk sits somewhere in the middle of these extremes and says that six hours is his sweet spot. Although he doesn't rise as early as you might think. After a long hard day at work and a little wind-down in the evening, he says that he often only gets to bed well past midnight, so he usually sets the alarm for 7 a.m. After he slapped his bedside ringer, you'd think that it would be time to do some stretching, grab a cup of coffee and maybe sit with the morning paper. However, he prefers to jump straight into what he calls critical emails for his first half-hour of consciousness. He's yet to discuss exactly what these essential emails are and why he needs to address them so early in the day, but we imagine most of them are to confirm daily meetings and give the green light on project milestones.

Breakfast

Once the emails have been checked off the list, Musk likes to get his morning routine into full swing by taking his much-anticipated daily shower. While many members of the Forbes Rich List swear by ice-cold showers to get their productivity levels soaring, Musk prefers it hot. With such a hectic schedule, something as simple as a daily shower could make for a great moment of peace and a break away from the constant noise of emails, texts and phone calls. It's also good to know that he respects his personal hygiene, towel-dried and into his typical white button-up shirt. Elon usually skips breakfast in favor of some more email checking before getting his shoes ready for the school run.

School run

You might find it odd, but a man worth $36.7 billion would be doing the school run himself. But it's not all that strange when you find out that his five boys school in SpaceX canvas. In 2014, Musk pulled all of his children out of their private education and co-founded an entirely new school for them to attend. He didn't believe that the current schooling system in the US was adequate or effective. So he decided to design one for himself, calling it Ad Astra after the Latin phrase for to the stars.

The school has just 30 students, mostly SpaceX employee children, and it's exclusive to only the most highly gifted. Out of the 100 students that apply every year, only 10 to 12 make the cut. Those that do meet the requirements follow a curriculum far different from what's considered normal. Ethics, science, engineering and math are the principal subjects. Keyboards replace handwriting, and there's a lot of focus on artificial intelligence. It's almost like Musk is priming the perfect workforce for the next generation of SpaceX and Tesla employees. Educational visions aside, having his kids' school ride by one of his central workplaces is a massive convenience and makes the school run an elementary part of the day.

Work Day

With the kids sorted, it's time for Elon to get to business. As a notoriously dedicated worker, Musk does not skimp out on the hours. However, he does prioritize working equally brilliant as he does hard in the early years of Tesla and SpaceX. He works 80 to 90 hours a week. Now that's still double the average 40-hour week, but most people adhere to it. However, Musk isn't exactly most people. To make his working week more manageable, he chooses to fragment his time into five minutes slots. Five minutes might not sound like enough time to even think about getting something done, but Musk swears by this practice and says that many people would be surprised at how much they could achieve in such a small amount of time if they gave the task at hand 100% of their attention. Musk splits his workweeks between his main companies spending Mondays and Fridays at SpaceX and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at Tesla.

Lunch

After skipping breakfast, you think that Musk would be ravenous by the time lunch came around. However, he must have a small stomach because he still insists on abiding by his five minutes timeslots, wolfing whatever he can get his hands on as quickly as he can. Most of his lunches are brought to him during meetings. Whether it is an omelette salad or a few slices of pizza. It appears that food is a simple means of fuel to Musk and more of an inconvenience than anything else.