10 main secrets of productivity Ilona Mask

This summer I read the book Ilona Mask Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. A wonderful reading and detailed story about the ups and downs of one of the greatest visionaries of our time. The book also provided an insight into Mask’s work ethic and productivity secrets that he uses to manage several companies.

Many would agree with the opinion that Ilon Musk has an extraordinary mind, huge ambitions and energy. But I believe that we mere mortals may well use some of his secrets of productivity in our daily life.
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1. Start your day with critical work.

Being the CEO of three companies - Tesla , SpaceX and Neuralink , - Mask has to do many things every day.

Therefore, he begins the day with the most important tasks. In his case, this is writing e-mails so that other people start / continue working to get things going. Usually his day starts at 7 am, Mask responds to letters for at least half an hour. He meticulously eliminates what is not critical now, and focuses only on key topics.

As he said in a speech at the USC Commencement:

“Focus on the signal, not the noise. Do not waste time on things that are not really beneficial. ”

How to apply
Choose your most important task (SVZ) for this day and take it first. The SVZ should have the strongest impact on your work.

For example : my most important task is to write a great text. Therefore, I always start my day by sitting down and writing. I do not proceed to the next task until I write, at least 1000 words.

Select the SVZ will help Pareto rule (80/20). Make it your habit to first solve the SVZ, before moving on to other tasks.

2. Use feedback loops

Mask has a very busy schedule, he often has to work in several places during the day. Therefore, he constantly tries to optimize his time costs.

Although Musk admits that he did not read any books on time management, however, he shares useful advice:

“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop when you constantly think about what you did and how you could do it better. So the best advice is to constantly think about how you could do something better. ”

Mask uses not only his own feedback, but also the opinion of other people: prompts him to look for desirable negative reviews. At first, this can be frustrating, but usually you can get much more from negative feedback.

Musk is also looking for the best people in any areas that provide constant and confidential feedback.

Reducing the feedback loop improves efficiency, speeds implementation and allows you to create better products.

How to apply
This approach works great both in professional activities and in everyday life.
Gather your team and get feedback on a particular product, feature, management style, business process, or anything else that you are currently trying to improve.

"Don't tell me what you like, tell me what you don't like."

You can do the same with friends. And although negative reviews may be wrong, you will know that friends are just trying to help, and they have good intentions.

3. Consider, based on the root causes

" Primary Cause " is a basic assumption that cannot be derived from any other. This is the only indisputable challenge.

Mask argues, based on the root causes , and not by analogy (for example, with past experience). Thus, the reasoning is built from scratch:

“You look at the basics, build reasoning on them, and then see if your conclusion works. It may differ, and may coincide with what people have done before. But it’s harder to think this way. ”

Here is an example of how Mask reasons, based on the root cause :

“What is the rocket made of?” From aerospace aluminum alloys, titanium, copper and carbon fiber. Then I asked, what is the cost of these materials in the commodity market? It turned out that the cost of materials is about 2% of the typical cost of the rocket. "

And instead of buying ready-made rockets for millions of dollars, Musk decided to acquire materials to build cheap rockets on his own. This is how SpaceX came about.

How to apply
Reasoning from the root causes makes you think differently. The root cause is the ability to get to the root of the problem. It is necessary to break the task into components.

There are three main steps in the application of such a thinking framework:

1. Recognizing and defining current assumptions : faced with a task, write out your current assumptions about it.

2. Highlight the root causes : find the main, basic truths or elements of the problem. As Musk says: “Drop everything, leaving only the fundamental truths, and say“ well, what we are sure of is true ”... and build on this reasoning from this.”

3. Create new solutions : if in the previous two stages you decomposed the task into composite ones, then you are now ready to create new solutions from scratch.

If you want to learn more about the way of thinking Mask and reasoning based on the root causes, then read this wonderful article: The Cook and the Chef: Musk's Secret Sauce .

4. Use asynchronous communication.

The first of these hacks gave you a small hint: Musk prefers to communicate on his own terms. That is , the default uses email and text , asynchronous methods of communication.

“I love email. I try to communicate asynchronously whenever possible. I have excellent mail. ”

And thanks to the use of a hidden address, it is difficult for him to contact those who do not work in his companies. This allows the Mask to focus on work tasks.

How to apply
Progress depends on the focus and application of Deep Work principles. This means living as asynchronously as possible and with minimal distractions from colleagues.

Three solutions for how you can start working on your own terms (in order of increasing difficulty):

1. Disable notifications : close all notifications on your phone, computer, and any other gadgets. If there is something really important, they will call you.

2. Do not go to meetings : do not agree to meet until the agenda is clear and until you know what kind of result you can expect. If possible, use email instead of meetings.

3. Work remotely : a noisy office distracts, and at home you can work in silence <ha, the author does not have small children - approx. trans.>. If this is not possible, try to knock out a separate room.

To achieve results in important work , try to distract as little as possible.

5. Manage communications

When Musk does not build rockets and does not revolutionize the automotive industry, it can only be “reached” by mail. He jokes at conferences: “I am sending many letters - I have mastered it perfectly. This is my main competence. ”

In his letters, Musk expresses very clearly, briefly and directly. For example, read the letter sent to all staff about the use of abbreviations, aptly named “ Acronyms Seriously Suck ”.

He often sends letters to entire companies with news, with instructions on communications , about the company's vision and mission, about how to be more productive in work.

“People work better when they know the purpose and the reason. It is important that people look to the future, come to work in the morning, and get pleasure from it. ”

He also performs masterfully in public, sincerely speaking about complex ideas in simple language. Musk often speaks in present tense when it comes to visionary topics. This is a language trick that evokes a sense of the coming future.

How to apply
According to a study by Carleton University, a third of the week of the “typical” knowledge worker goes to the correspondence. Therefore, communication by mail is akin to art.

You need to be expressed briefly, but at the same time convey your thought. Every word is important in the mail. Here are some tips:

Be brief : do not write ten expressions when two are sufficient. You can practice this: take your letter, written in a familiar manner, and cut the number of words in half.

Avoid "soft" words : do not write "I feel", "I am not sure", "maybe", avoid the passive form and any participle. All this is wasting your time and your addressees, leading to confusion and misunderstanding.

Know what you want : think about what you want to achieve with your letter, and first of all, put it in simple language. After some practice, this presentation will be a letter.

Highlight important in bold : if in a correspondence with several recipients you need to answer a specific person, select in bold its name, question and time.

Transfer ethics : never just send a long chain of correspondence without a few new items as a summary explaining why you are sending it and what you want from the addressee.

6. Batch tasks

Mask is strategically multi-tasking. When it is possible, it combines several tasks - this life hacking is called batching. For example, he answers letters while he eats or meets with someone at dinner.

“I found that I can communicate with children and continue to write letters. I can spend time with them and work at the same time ... If I didn’t know how, I couldn’t do my job. ”
Another example - he sends letters and bills, talking on the phone or giving an interview.

How to apply
Studies say that multitasking is usually less effective than single-tasking. The brain needs time to rebuild to another task, this is called task switching. Not the tasks themselves, but it is this switching that tires you and makes you unproductive.

But if you pack similar tasks that require similar types of thinking, then you can effectively work on several tasks without slowing down the workflow. In other words, the brain focuses on one type of task at a time.

A couple of examples:
• Sketch at a time the outline of all blog posts for the next week.
• Process at once all letters, messages in the messenger, phone calls and other types of communications.
• Update multiple related tables at once.

To understand what other tasks you can combine, write down all of your main activities during the day and week, and think about what you can combine. If necessary, change the composition of the "packages".

To speed packaging, you can use the tomato method .

7. Plan

The management of three companies is a considerable feat, that is, time is an important factor for Mask. He constantly tries to optimize the use of time with the help of feedback loops.

Like many other overproductive and successful people, Musk follows a very detailed and specific day plan. He divides his calendar into five-minute segments, and you will not be easy to squeeze into one of them.

He gives priority to engineering, design and production, spending 80% of his working time on them.

“I do not spend time talking about something transcendental. I spend time solving engineering and production problems. ”

Breaking his day into five-minute segments, Musk plans a day more tasks.

How to apply
The most productive people work with the calendar, not with a to-do list. Calendars are limited and allow you to feel better time, so it's easier for you to determine how much time you have to complete projects during the week.

Splitting the day into small sections and scheduling tasks on the calendar helps improve productivity. But you are not obliged to divide by five minutes. I believe that for my work it is more efficient to divide the day into 30-minute segments. Therefore, find the division that would best suit you and your work.

And make sure you plan EVERYTHING: checking mail, calling customers, lunch, and meetings. Everything should get into the calendar. Tear down the to-do list and work on the calendar.

8. Set ambitious goals.

Perhaps one of the most famous features of Mask is his tendency to set incredibly ambitious deadlines for the projects of his companies. He uses ambitious goals as a way to change perceptions:

“The first step is to demand the impossible. Then the probability will work. ”

Here is the story from the former SpaceX executive director: “It’s as if he were forcing everyone to work on this machine, which must travel from Los Angeles to New York on one tank. They will work on the machine for a year and test all its components. When the car leaves for New York in a year, all vice presidents secretly believe that it will at best get to Las Vegas. As a result, she arrives at New Mexico - twice as far as they expected - and Ilon is still angry. He receives twice as much from people as anyone. ”

The last sentence illustrates the power of ambitious goals. Even in the face of failure, your goal was so bold, so unattainable, that you celebrate a small achievement, because you thought that nothing would come of it.

Initially, Tesla planned to begin shipments of Roadster in 2006. The company postponed the date several times until the car became available in 2008. And although she left the assembly line almost two years late, Tesla became the first supplier of high-grade electric cars.

“I say something, and then it usually comes true. Perhaps not on schedule, but usually comes true. "

Mask's ambitious goals gave us a world in which electric cars are one of the best cars on the market, and finally reusable rockets appeared: “When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars, people said“ Ha, why do we need horses? ”He made a huge bet, and won. " Assigning targets that support the status quo will not give you reusable rockets.

How to apply
The essence of ambitious goals is to get oneself out of the comfort zone. You will not develop by doing the same as before. Growth depends on your failures when you are trying to achieve more. If you set yourself five great goals, but achieved two, then you have already surpassed all who have never tried.

Ambitious goals require better and more intensive work, they force you to come up with new things more often, as opposed to ordinary tasks. And trying to achieve goals, you improve your skills to the level necessary for this.

At first, you will not know how ambitious your goals should be. By trial and error, find out how many previous boundaries you need to push. But the most important thing is to start trying, and then make corrections.

The next time you plan your work, set aside a few extra minutes to contribute to your ambitious goal. Try to force yourself to do 50% more than is required for an ordinary task. Succeed and be amazed at your incredible performance. This strategy is the first step towards impressive goals that you could not even think about before!

9. Develop a growth set.

In 2004, Musk called the supplier to find out the price of an electromechanical actuator. The supplier requested $ 120,000. Based on the root cause, Musk figured out what components are needed, and asked Steve Davis, who now works at SpaceX as the director of advanced projects, to make one actuator from zero for less than $ 5,000. Davis spent nine months on designing and creating device, which cost $ 3,900 and flew into space in a Falcon 1 rocket.

Mask is never satisfied with the current position. His companies have achieved great success, but Musk knows that there is no limit to perfection - in all areas. You can always do better, faster or cheaper:

“Proceed from the fact that you are mistaken. Your task is to make less mistakes. ”

This is called setting on growth, an important skill that distinguishes successful people from all others. Having developed such a setup, you will know that you can learn anything if you make enough effort. And if you fail, then approach the task on the other hand, until you find a working solution. You will try until you succeed.

“Here failure is an option. If you do not fail, then you are creating a little new. "

The opposite is the setting of permanence, when the current state of affairs is rarely reviewed. Everything will remain as it is, because "it is so accepted." Stereotypes are considered universal truths and are not questioned. As a result, people are stagnating.

On the other hand, the development of growth attitudes in oneself allows one to grow both personally and professionally. And even if your daily achievements are small, they will accumulate over time. With a daily improvement of 1%, you will get almost 38% improvement per year.

How to apply
Growth stems from solving complex problems, issues and problems. To succeed, you need to train your brain to perceive failures and difficulties as a form of progress, approaching a solution.

Here's how to start developing a growth attitude:

Constantly learn : expand your knowledge through books, learn from your personal difficulties and from others. Loading your brain with fresh knowledge allows it to find new ideas and solutions that add value to your work and life.

Be persistent : change your perception and consider failures as short delays and rewarding experiences. Adapt and re-implement your ideas, so the next time you can succeed.

Choose the difficult : if you have a choice, then choose what is more difficult. Think of challenges as opportunities to expand your skills and grow above you.

Accept failures : they happen in the life of each of us. All fail. Learn from them, analyzing what went wrong and how to fix it, use the new experience in the next attempt.

Be open to feedback : a critical success factor is effective and timely feedback on what needs to be improved. Be more open to feedback, even non-constructive.

Honor the others : one is not a warrior in the field, so start supporting the successes of other people, and then they will not interfere with your success. When your moment of glory comes, they will celebrate with you.

10. Expand your knowledge base.

According to his brother, Musk at an early age read two books a day. He devoured knowledge. As a result, he became well versed in many sciences, such as physics, mathematics, engineering, and computer science.

One of my favorite quotes:
"It is important to consider knowledge as a semantic tree: understand the fundamental principles, which are the trunk and main branches, before moving on to the leaves / details, otherwise they will have nothing to hang on."

Even managing several companies, Musk is constantly trying to learn from people around him who are better at understanding specific topics. Quote from the book: “He can trap an engineer at the SpaceX factory and throw him with questions about the type of valve or some kind of material.

“At first, I thought he was testing my knowledge,” said Kevin Brogan, one of the company's first engineers. “And then I realized that he was just learning. He will ask until he finds out 90% of what you know yourself. "

Over time, Musk developed his “T-shaped” skills: great knowledge in one particular field and a solid amount of knowledge in many other disciplines and topics. This allows him to be a shark of business, but at the same time Musk uses his extensive knowledge to create innovations and search for other solutions, he is more resourceful and effectively collaborates with experts in other fields.

How to apply
Let's start with a practical example: you want to be healthy. For this, it is not enough to engage in some kind of sport. You need to learn a lot: learn about the basics of a good diet, how to develop muscles, flexibility, how not to “plant” the heart with inept trainings and so on. By deepening your knowledge in one area - sports - you also expand your knowledge in many other areas necessary for maintaining health. This is called "T-shaped" skills.

Let's now look at someone working in the marketing or development department: in-depth knowledge of production planning and management, SEO and viral loops, as well as extensive knowledge of many other topics, such as statistics, basic programming, design principles and copywriting.



Here's how you can develop T-shaped skills in your field:
1. Draw a large letter T and write a list of basic skills, secondary skills and basic knowledge. If this helps, simulate a successful person in your field of activity and his range of expertise.
2. See where you are now in each of these areas.
3. Improve your deep expertise with the help of books, courses, articles and other relevant specialists.
4. Constantly evaluate yourself anew and improve your knowledge to become a "T-shaped" specialist.

11. Bonus: shower

One of the most popular answers in the 2015 Reddit AMA branch was Mask’s answer to the question: “Which daily habit had the greatest positive impact on your life?”. Mask replied simply: “Shower”.



In another interview, Musk admitted that while taking a shower, the best ideas come to him: “It sounds like a real cliche, but the shower is perhaps the most ... you wake up, you go to the shower, and, it seems to me, ideas have leaked into the subconscious, it did not happen in the soul, but you seem to get the result of nightly calculations. ”

I think this is also a useful productivity lesson: your brain worked all night, trying to find a solution in the background. A few minutes after waking up, it turns on - and this can happen in the soul - helping you to see more clearly the difficulties you are facing.

Also a shower is an opportunity to calmly think right after a night rest. For example, you can plan a day or think about solutions to problems that you encounter.

"I think that an ordinary person can choose to become extraordinary."