I Agree With Elon, No Reservations

"There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week"

I will share a little story with you. I know a person that Elon Musk interned for early in his career. The story goes that Elon would be asleep at times during the day when he was supposed to be banging out work for his employer. He was known as exceptionally bright but always sleepy. It turned out that while he was “working” during the day, he was up working all night long on his first wildly successful company.

You can't change the world on 40 hours per week. Too many people pounced on that statement and grabbed it as an opportunity to judge a man who represents the ability to burn the boats for something that he believes in, one more time. The problem with "too many people" is that none of them are attempting to change the world.

I get the sense that it is not politically correct to support such a mindset. The overachievers that are also working an 80+ hour a week are sadly quiet for the risk of being judged that there is a lack of balance in their life, that their families are suffering for it or that they are doomed to burnout or die of some horrible ailment.

Work is only work when you are not doing what you love. Loving your work, enhancing other’s lives for the organizations you create or the products that change the world or even save it is something to be proud of.

I do have true sorrow for those that never in their lives feel that Van Gogh moment.

Elon Musk is nowhere near a perfect businessman, quite the contrary. But what he does represent is the ability to drive an agenda and a deliver a vision in to a reality. I admire Elon because he has chosen to design and live his life by his rules. People choose to go to work for his organizations and missions with no misunderstanding that they too are going to be required to “burn the boats” and more times than not it is going to hurt more than it doesn’t. But that is what happens when you are intending to change the world. Notice I used the word “intend” and not “want”. “Intent” has direction and certainty, “want” is just a hollow desire.

When you intend on changing the world, you are viewed as “one of the crazy ones”, head nod to Jobs and Apple. You know no one that has ever created massive success without an obscene level of work, intensity and what is at first categorized as way out thinking. In every case it is a must. There are trust fund babies, lottery winners and one-hit wonders, but none of them changed a category or the world. The world has enough people who are standing there thinking they hit a triple yet they were born on third base.

I consciously work hard not to judge those who have little desire to overachieve in a selected activity. It takes more than 80 hours per week to raise a child. It takes more than 80 hours a week to have a healthy relationship. It takes more than 80 hours per week to be a good human.

It is your time. Use it well. I just know I have little interest in sitting in a rocking chair in my twilight years wishing I left a bit more of myself on the field.