Top 10 Elon Musk Productivity Secrets for Insane Success

We had the chance to read SpaceX, Tesla, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Elon Musk. It was a marvelous experience, worth reading, where our essay writers found interesting information about gains and losses of one of the biggest visionaries of our time.

There are also Elon Musk’s productivity secrets and sneak preview that he uses to be in charge of three companies.

We know that now Elon Musk is very intelligent and successful person with a lot of pursuits and ambitions. I believe that each of us can incorporate something from his productivity secrets to make our daily lives better.

I prepared top 10 Elon Musk’s secrets which you can apply in your own life.

Start your day with the most important business

Being CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink, Musk knows exactly what things he should take care of in the first place.

Elon wakes up at 7 a.m. every day and believes that the man has to start his/her day with the most critical work. In his case, he deals with some crucial emails, for about half an hour, as they unblock the work of his employees. As the CEO he is responsible for multiple companies, where lots of people work.

Once he said “Focus on signal over noise. Don’t waste time on stuff that doesn’t actually make things better.”

Define your priorities, and every morning when you wake up – chase them!

Use this secret to find your Most Important Task (MTI) for every day.  If you don’t know how to set up your MIT, think about the thing that has the biggest impact on your work. By doing this you will find your MIT straight away.

For example, my job is to write useful articles.  That is the reason why I get up in the early morning and write 1000 words. I have a strict rule. I cannot go to another task until I write, at least, 1000 words. This actually works for me, as I struggled for a long time to have my work done in time.

Use negative feedback as the chance to become better

If your schedule is very tight, you have to learn how to optimize your time. Musk said that he actually doesn’t have any books about time management, he shares another productivity secret.

 “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”- Elon Musk

As being humans, our nature doesn’t like to be criticized. Although, according to Musk you have to deal with preferably negative feedback. Of course, none of us enjoys reading negative responses about our work. But, you can get a lot more out of it.

Elon tries to hire people who are ready to be faithful employees and give reasonable feedback.

The peculiarity of this secret is that you can apply it in both ways: professionally and personally in your daily life.  You can practice even with your friend. And, remember every time you feel that their negative feedback hurts you, they do it only to fix the situation. They do it to make you stronger not to show that you’re bad at something.

“Don’t tell me what you like, tell me what you don’t”.

Use asynchronous ways of communication

Communicate on your own terms. Musk chooses emails and texts as main ways of communication. He tells: “I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.”

Focusing on the critical work keeps him successful in running three companies. How can you apply this productive secret to your life?

• First of all, turn off notification! In the modern world, people so easily get attached to chats or emails. At average it consumes half of our whole productivity. Switch off notification on your phone, computer or on any other gadget that you use. Don’t be afraid to miss something, people still can call you if it is significant enough. Time-winning move.
• Remote working. If you feel that you cannot focus in the noisy offices, ask your boss to work remotely (if your position allows you that). You can work at home or in private office. The results may be twice time higher.
• Decline meetings. Use meetings in-person only if you are sure about the outcomes. If not use the phone or email communication.

Distractions kill your progress, don’t let them be in charge of your work.

 

Get to the root cause of the problem

He says: “You look at the fundamentals and construct your reasoning from that and then see if you have a conclusion that works or doesn’t work. And it may or may not be different from what people have done in the past. It’s harder to think that way, though.”

If there is a problem, or something goes wrong, ask yourself a question: What was the first push in emerging of this situation?

Example from Elon’s life is fantastic. Once he asked himself a question: “What is rocket made of?” He named all the elements and realized that the price of them is about 2% of the cost of the rocket. That’s how he came up with an idea to create his own company SpaceX.

Learn how to master communication

Whatever Musk does, one thing remains the same- He is good at emails. Elon said that email is his core competency. Very often he sends emails to the entire company, learning his stuff how to communicate.

“People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.”

Being good at public speaking, he always explains the complex concepts in an easy and understandable way. He also uses the present time to trick people that the future actually happens now.

`You can take the following advantages from this secret:

When people communicate with you over the emails, no word can be missed, every word counts.

• Know why you write: Before writing the email, think about the outcomes you want to get out of the online conversation.
• Keep it short: Don’t write a lot of sentences when you can tell the same information in three lines. Try to write your message, reread it, and edit to delete the unnecessary words.
• Avoid squishy words: Don’t use the passive voice, or phrases as “probably”, “maybe”, “I’m not sure”. It will show your recipient that you are not sure about this business, so why should he/she?

Multiple tasks

Musk uses a productive hack called batching. He tries to combine a lot of tasks. No wonder he has three companies. The simple example is: “ I have lunch and answers the emails. Arranging meetings is also convenient during your mealtime’.

Read the quote on this subject:

“But what I find is I’m able to be with [my kids] and still be on email. I can be with them and still be working at the same time… If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to get my job done.”

Apply this hack by finding the things that can be batched together so you can do them at once.

Time is the essence

For the person who runs three companies, time is really what matters. Elon carefully goes through his schedule, as there is no option to waste time. His schedule is very detailed and he divided it into 5 minutes chunks. It allows him to take care of everything. There is always an important aspect-prioritizing.

“I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time-solving engineering and manufacturing problems.”

Follow Musk’s secret and boost your productivity by time management. Use calendar, divide your tasks according to days or hours. If you are disciplined so your work will be.

Leave your zone of comfort

Set the stretch goals. Usually, if you want the things to work better, do something that you didn’t try before. Growth doesn’t come without efforts. Starting something new is always difficult, but instead of thinking how hard it is, think about the positive results.

Elon says: “I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on the schedule, but it usually happens.”

When you decided your goals, give one extra. Force yourself to do more today, and the future will pay you back.

Growth mindset

“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

Do you agree? Do you think that Elon Musk or any other successful person didn’t have the failures? More than you can even imagine. Success is built on a failure.

Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and push harder every time the things go wrong. Nothing stays the same…

Learn constantly

Even being the CEO of three companies Musk always learns something useful from people around him.  Knowledge should be your inner drive that is capable to implement all of your ambitions.

“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree?—?make sure you understand the fundamental principles, the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

Write a list of the things you are good at. Then, decide whether you want to improve one of them or to learn something completely new.

Always check your progress in different areas. Read books, it will expand your knowledge and the general perception of the world. To be good at communication you have to be aware of the variety of staff. You never know who you have to deal with.

I hope that Elon Musk’s productive secrets will help you to find your successful path.