1 WORK EVERY WAKING HOUR Elon Musk Motivational Video YouTube

When I was young, I didn't really know what I was going to do when I got older. People kept asking me, but then eventually I thought the idea of inventing things would be really cool. The reason I thought that was because I read a quote from Arthur C. Clarke, which said that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And that's really true. If you go back, say, 300 years, the things that we take for granted today, you'd be burned at the stake for. You know, being able to fly, being able to see over long distances, being able to communicate, and having access to all the world's information instantly from almost anywhere on the earth. This is stuff that really would be considered magic in times past. In fact, I think it actually goes beyond that, because there are many things that we take for granted today that weren't even imagined in times past. They weren't even in the realm of magic. So it actually goes beyond that. So I thought, well, if I can do some of those things, basically if I can advance technology, then that's like magic, and that would be really cool. And I was at sort of a slight existential crisis, because I was trying to figure out what does it all mean? Like, what's the purpose of things? And I came to the conclusion that if we can advance the knowledge of the world, if we can do things that expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we're better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened, and that's really the only way forward. I think about what technology solution is necessary in order to achieve the particular goal, and then try to make as much progress in that direction as possible. I think being a multi-planet species and being out there among the stars is important for the long-term survival of humanity, but then the part that I find personally most motivating is that it creates a sense of adventure, and it makes people excited about the future. If you consider two futures, one where we are forever confined to Earth until eventually something terrible happens, or another future where we are out there on many planets, maybe even going beyond the solar system, I think that second version is incredibly exciting and inspiring, and there need to be reasons to get up in the morning. You know, life can't just be about solving problems. Otherwise, what's the point? There's got to be things that people find inspiring and make life worth living. When my brother and I were starting our first company, instead of getting an apartment, we just rented a small office, and we slept on the couch. And we showered at the YMCA, and we were so hot up, we had one computer, so the website was up during the day, and I was coding at night, seven days a week, all the time. And I sort of briefly had a girlfriend in that period, and in order to be with me, she had to sleep in the office. So work hard, like, I mean, every waking hour. That's the thing I would say, particularly if you're starting a company. A natural human tendency is wishful thinking. So a challenge for entrepreneurs is to say, well, what's the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking to them, versus pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have merit. And that is a really difficult thing to tell you. Can you tell the difference between those two things? So you need to be sort of very rigorous in your self-analysis. I think certainly extremely tenacious, and then just work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in, you know, 80-hour, 80-100-hour weeks every week. All those things improve the odds of success. How do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea? Where do you get the internal strength to do that? Well, first of all, I'd say I actually think I feel fear quite strongly. So it's not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. But there are times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that you do it in spite of fear. People should think, well, I feel fear about this, and therefore I shouldn't do it. It's normal to feel fear. So you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway? If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear. Drive overrides fear. It's about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can't think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.