Elon Musk on Work Quotes

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

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

"I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying."

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

"Work is much more fun if you are working towards a meaningful goal."

"If you’re co-founder or CEO, you have to do all the tasks that you might not want to do... No task is too menial."

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

"I think it is the most important thing to have a good hardware engineering team."

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

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

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

"If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you're putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you're doing the same thing, you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve."

"Great companies are built on great products."

"If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it's not."

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

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

"I only hire people who are smarter than me."

"I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens."

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

"You need to be in a position where you're constantly learning."

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

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

"I don't spend my time pontificating on high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems."

"A company is a group of people organized to create a product or service, and that product or service is only as good as the people in the company."

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

"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."

"Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week."

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

"Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time."

"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."

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

"My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone's talent and not someone's personality."

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