Elon Musk on Deep Work Quotes

"Great companies are built on great products."

"I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future."

"Starting a business is not for everyone. Starting a business - I'd say, number one is have a high pain threshold."

"I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done."

"The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur."

"If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion."

"Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. This improves the odds of success."

"Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death."

"You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong."

"Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up."

"People work better when they know what the goal is and why."

"It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket."

"I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact."

"Physics is a really good framework for thinking. Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there."

"Really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends."

"The biggest mistake I made was weighing too much on someone's talent and not someone's personality."

"The path to the CEO's office should not be through the CFO's office, and it should not be through the marketing department."

"When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world."

"You need to be in a position where you're doing something that you're passionate about."

"Any product that needs a manual to work is broken."

"You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible product you can. Find everything that's wrong with it and fix it."

"Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy."

"Constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself."

"Focus on signal over noise. Don't waste time on things that don't actually make things better."

"I don't spend my time high-leveling concepts. I spend my time on engineering and manufacturing problems."

"If something is important enough, you should try; even if the probable outcome is failure."

"If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day."

"If you're co-founder or CEO, you have to do all the kinds of tasks you might not want to do."

"I'm interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology."

"I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary."

"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 you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side."

"It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent."