We learn that:

• When you see a problem, you don’t complain about it, instead you try to find a way and solve it.
• You don’t just dream big, but you wake up and work hard (really hard) to achieve it.
• You don’t just think about yourself, you care for the causes which affects the nature and the future of human beings.
• You do what needs to be done, not what is easy, nor what is normal.
• You don’t give up when you fail, you try to find out what went wrong, you learn from your mistakes and come back stronger.
• You don’t lose confidence when things are not going your way and you stay humble while you are on the peak of success.
• You learn that it is possible to teach yourself rocket science.
• And you never forget to be cool…

---

• Reading Can Make You Smart, Very Smart.

When Someone asked Elon Musk “You don’t have any degree in Aeronautics and still You are the founder most successful private Rocket Company. How did you do these things?” He Said, “I used to read a lot.”

• Hard work can help you to achieve great heights.

When Elon and his brother used to work on their first startup, they used to work 18–20 hours day and night continuously for years. Hard work helped them to achieve great heights and make a great venture X(dot)com which merged with Paypal.

• Not Giving Up during Bad Times.

When he was fired from his own startup, he didn’t give up. He worked hard and started his next venture SpaceX. When His Startup SpaceX and Tesla were in serious trouble, at that point too he didn’t give up. He worked hard and made it successful stuff.

• Thinking out of the box.

When everyone was advising him that he is working on some impractical thing that will fail for sure. At that time, he didn’t listen people, he worked for his own goals and made it successful stuff.

• Following Your Passion.

Elon Musk and his Venture are true examples of following the passion even in bad times and working to achieve some great milestone.

---

• If you want to change the world, you need a grand vision.
  • It helps to have a rich family that owns mines using slave labor, too.
• If you apply yourself with ferocious dedication, and are willing to put in the work, you can learn to do incredible things.
  • And then assume that because you know a lot about one highly complex technical subject, that means you’re a genius about absolutely everything, including things you haven’t studied.
• It’s not enough to have vision, you also have to apply tremendous hard work to the things you want.
  • Which leaves less time for things like learning social skills.
    • Which means that you treat the people around you like disposable commodities.
• It’s possible to disrupt multiple industries.
  • And when people congratulate you for your success, it’s easy to believe that you are entitled to success, that success will happen no matter what you do, and that anyone who says otherwise is just wrong (at best) or actively malicious (at worst).
• An engineering approach of “iterate fast and make mistakes” is extremely effective in an industry primed for cutting-edge technology disruption.
  • It’s a terrible way to run a romantic life.
• Huge buckets of money can enable someone in remarkable ways.
  • Huge buckets of money can insulate someone from accountability.
• A combination of single-minded intent and raw intelligence can make you incredibly effective.
  • A combination of single-minded intent and raw intelligence can make you a petulant, narcissistic man-child.
• Surround yourself with talented people and give them excellent direction and you can accomplish impossible things.
  • Surround yourself with suckups and yes-men and you can start believing your own bullshit.

Look, straight talk here:

Elon Musk’s drooling fanbois are a bunch of idiots. Elon Musk’s army of rabid haterz are also a bunch of idiots.

A lot of folks really struggle with nuance and complexity. They need people to be simple, black or white caricatures. A person must either be a hero or a villain, a savior or a schemer.

The folks who say Elon Musk is an overrated poseur who never actually contributed anything at Tesla or SpaceX are morons who don’t know what they’re talking about. He’s legit a genius and a fantastic engineer. I’ve talked to bona-fide, actual rocket engineers who’ve met Musk and say he’s the real deal. He was integrally involved in the design of the Raptor rocket engine.

The folks who say Elon Musk is a boy wonder who is amazing at everything he does are morons who don’t know what they’re talking about. Elon has the social skills of potato salad and a peculiar and singularly toxic blend of self-absorption, entitlement, and narcissism that legit make him a terrible person to work for. Like many smart people, he believes his first thought on any subject, even if it’s completely outside his wheelhouse, is Revealed Truth™. He’s succeeded splendidly at a few things, so he thinks that makes him infallible at everything.

All these things can be true at the same time.

The need to think he’s a poseur moron because you don’t like him is stupid. The need to see him as some kind of infallible tech saint because he’s done amazing things at SpaceX is stupid.

The most important thing we can learn from Elon Musk? How to avoid simplistic cartoon thinking. Not by example—simplistic cartoon thinking virtually defines his approach to the world—but in the way we think about him.