by Elon Musk's ability to accomplish

incredibly difficult things and often

at a ridiculously fast pace.

Love him or hate him, you can't deny that Elon Musk

is a pretty productive guy.

And, as someone who loves digging in to see

what makes successful people tick,

I recently started to wonder

what are the habits and practices

and mindsets that drive Elon Musk's ability

to get things done.

After reading Ashlee Vance's biography on Musk

as well as digging into some of his Reddit AMAs

and past online interviews, I came up with five lessons

that answer this question.

And, these five lessons are things that anybody

can put into practice in their own lives.

And, we're gonna start with one that is deceptively simple.

At an AMA he did on Reddit in 2015,

one of the most updot, updoted, updooted.

One of the most updooted (laughs).

I should just say updooted.

One of the most updooted questions was what daily habit

do you believe has the largest positive impact

on your life?

To which Musk simply replied, "Showering."

Now, I'll admit that min initial reaction to this question

was that Elon was basically trolling this person.

And, hey, it's possible that he was.

But, it's also possible that he was serious about it.

And, reading his answer made me think about a broader,

but still related lesson that I've learned myself.

When I take my personal appearance seriously,

I take my work more seriously as well.

If I wake up in the morning and I shower immediately

and I wear clothes that make me feel confident,

I'm likely to have a really productive day

even if I'm working here at home where nobody can see me.

And, this is something that many entrepreneurs learn

really early on when they start working for themselves.

And, it's a lesson that many students learn

when they go to college and they get out

of their parents' houses.

And, the fewer external structures you have in your life,

you know, managers, parents, incredibly tough fairies

named Jorgen Von Strangle, the more you have to rely

on your own self-discipline and willpower

to get things done.

And, those two traits are surprisingly influenced

by your hygiene, by your personal appearance,

and by the organization and cleanliness of your environment.

So, if you wanna be more productive in your work

on a daily basis, take these things seriously.

Shower every day, or at least often enough

that you don't smell like a beta tester for a cologne

made by Oscar the Grouch.

And, dress well.

And, by that I don't mean you have to wear

a suit and tie to class, but wear clothes

that make you feel confident and that make it look like

you're taking yourself seriously.

Another thing that I noticed about Musk,

which forms the basis of our second lesson,

is that he sets an example for his team.

Musk is a famously demanding CEO, expecting his employees

to work long hours, outwork the competition

at every point, and basically give up any semblance

of a work-life balance.

And, this can make him seem abrasive and uncaring.

Here's one thing that he said

to one of his employees at Tesla.

"I want you to think ahead and think so hard every day

"that your head hurts.

"I want your head to hurt every night when you go to bed."

Now, despite this abrasive nature, most of Musk's current

and former employees have a lot of respect for him.

And, they're willing to sacrifice a balanced life

in order to meet his demands.

Why is this?

Well, one reason is that Musk doesn't expect

anyone on his teams to work any harder than he does.

In other words, he sets the example.

Musk puts in anywhere between 85 to 100 hours per week,

often working the full seven days.

And, he also has an intense system of bashing his tasks

in order to wring every minute for all that it's worth.

So, while Musk's employees are working hard,

he's working harder.

Of course, an integral part of setting an example,

is making sure that example is visible

to the people whose morale will benefit from it.

And, that's why Musk chose to put his desk at Tesla

on the factory floor in the middle

of all the other engineers' desks.

Steve Jurvetson, who's one of the board members at Tesla

explained Musk's reasoning for selecting this location.

"He picks the most visible place on purpose.

"He's at Teslas just about every Saturday and Sunday

"and wants people to see him and know they can find him."

Now, here's how this relates to your personal productivity.

Deliberately choosing to set a good example

for those around you, will further motivate you

to consistently improve.

When you know other people are watching,

especially people that you've put demands on,

you're not gonna rest on your laurels.

Plus, when you're working on a group project,

or if you eventually get into a situation

where you're managing other people, setting an example

is gonna help to make your team a more cohesive

and effective unit.

And, for Elon Musk, having his teams be cohesive

and effective is crucial because he is constantly

setting stretch goals, which is the basis

for our third lesson.

One of Musk's most notorious character traits,

is a tendency to set incredibly ambitious deadlines

for his companies' various projects.

And, this can sometimes be unrealistic.

If you're familiar with Tesla's early history,

you might remember that they initially promised

to ship the first Roadster back in 2006,

a date that was further pushed back and back and back

until the Roadster finally released in late 2008.

On the flip side, these seemingly impossible deadlines

have a powerful effect on his teams.

Here's how one former executive at SpaceX put it.

"It's like he has everyone working on this car

"that is meant to get from Los Angeles to New York

"on one tank of gas.

"They'll work on the car for a year and test

"all of its parts.

"Then, when they set off for New York after that year,

"all the vice presidents think privately

"that the car will be lucky to get to Las Vegas.

"What ends up happening is that the car gets

"to New Mexico, twice as far as they ever expected,

"and Elon is still mad.

"He gets twice as much as anyone else out of people."

And, I wanna put special emphasis

on that last sentence there

because it perfectly illustrates the power of stretch goals.

Essentially, a stretch goal is a goal

that's beyond your current capabilities

or sometimes your current perception of your capabilities.

If you think that you can do five pull-ups

and you have a coach who tells you to jump up on the bar

and do 10, he's just set a pretty challenging

stretch goal for you.

And, what's gonna happen is you're probably

not gonna get 10 pull-ups, but you are gonna get seven.

Often the seemingly impossible stretch goal

is exactly what's needed to push us past

our previous conceived limits.

You have to have the guts to go for something

that you don't think you can currently achieve

because in pursuit of it, you're gonna bring

your skills up to the level that they need to be at

to actually get it done.

This kind of growth doesn't happen

when you keep aiming for things

that are just as doable as what you've done before.

And, Elon Musk knows this well.

Another thing that Musk knows well is the value

of developing a wide knowledge base.

Among the CEOs of all the tech companies out there,

Musk stands out as one of the few who actually understands

a lot of the science behind the cars and rockets

that his companies create.

And, this wide understanding of physics and math

and engineering allows Musk to actually follow along

when his engineers explain problems to him.

And, he can often suggest solutions that do end up working.

Additionally, this wide breadth of knowledge

allows him to push past mental roadblocks

and to motivate his team to innovate and do things

that others thought were impossible.

The idea of reusing rockets is a great example here.

In his book, Ashlee Vance notes that,

"There's a camp of space experts who think Musk

"is flat-out wasting his time, and that engineering

"calculations already prove the reusable rockets

"to be a fool's errand."

And, yet in March of this year, SpaceX launched

the same Falcon 9 rocket into space for the second time.

Reusable rockets are here.

Now, Musk's knowledge of science and engineering

isn't solely a product of his pre-CEO years.

Even as he worked to run his companies,

he also strove to learn the fundamentals

of what his engineers were building.

Here's a great passage from Vance's book on this.

He would trap an engineer in the SpaceX factory

and set to work grilling him about a type of valve

or specialized material.

"I though at first that he was challenging me

"to see if I knew my stuff," said Kevin Brogan,

one of the early engineers.

"Then I realized he was trying to learn things.

"He would quiz you until he learned 90% of what you know."

Musk's insistence on learning about every aspect

of the engineering that goes into his companies' products

makes him a T-shaped person, somebody with a deep knowledge

and skills in one particular area, but also a shallower,

yet still fairly substantial amount of knowledge

in a broad array of other topics and disciplines.

By contrast, an I-shaped person, a specialist,

has a deep knowledge in one particular area,

but that's about it.

They basically stay in their lane.

And, there's also what you could call

a dash-shaped archetype.

These are your jack of all trades,

master of none type people.

Out of these three archetypes, you should be striving

to become a T-shaped person, because doing so

gives you the best of both world.

You develop expertise in one particular area

to a degree where you can make

a truly meaningful contribution to it,

but having broad knowledge in a lot of other areas

allows you to be more creative, and allows you

to look at problems from a new perspective

and solve things in a different way.

And, that brings us to our final

and most important lesson from Musk.

Always assume that you can improve.

I wanna start this section off with what is

hands-down my favorite quote from Elon Musk.

"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 is never satisfied with where he is now.

He may be proud of his accomplishments

and what his companies have been able to achieve,

but he knows that in every single area

there's always something that could be done better.

There's always a better, faster, cooler,

or cheaper way to do it.