"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker"
7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.
7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.
That said, working over 14 hours per day 7 days a week is implausible to me. Maybe in short bursts but I doubt he does that for any stretch of time.
The Elon Musk PR machine & cult of public enthusiasm is a massive business asset. When you're in the business of selling dreams to investors and employees pushing themselves to the limit this type of 'fact' is going to get thrown around.
myself I have been around some six to six executives who even at parties talk shop. hell we used to joke that when one went on vacation it only made his emails longer
Overall its hard to believe considering he also has Space x and other investments and im suresomeone is streching the truth. But I dont doubt the guy lives and breaths his work.
I sometimes wonder, whether such a hyped personality could be completely synthesized. Just a actor and a really good propaganda show. And if all those morons going along for the ride, would learn from that being revealed.
I think I read somewhere that somewhere in France or Germany some city or some department/province said you can't require your employees to promptly respond to emails outside of their work hours (I imagine they don't have "at-will" employment).
It's so fundamentally opposite to my experience, and I'm curious about what's driving you to work like this.
But.. to each thir own, I suppose.
I also find that sometimes “my time” looks an awful lot like work in the sense that I might do very similar things (hey, I enjoy programming!), the difference is that one is done on my terms, when and how I want and I do it to relax, have fun or otherwise do something I want, while the other is something I do because I have to.
Elon is cool and all, but his fanboys are making the whole thing really ridiculous. Btw, it might even be true, but can we falsify it? Exactly as in religion (to give it in Karl Popper's terms).
It does seem pretty unlikely unless he's counting Networking/social type events in the evenings and stuff.
Organizing food and eating - another 2 hours. If cooking add an hour to that so 3 hours for food.
For cleaning and basic home maintenance - minimum 1 hour. Personal hygiene - add an hour so total 2 hours.
Commuting if necessary - 1 hour minimum.
Add 8 hours or let's be harder and take 6 hours for sleep. That's a total of 14 hours that can't be negotiated leaving you with 10 hours for work.
Given the brain will not operate at that stretch you need distraction, so web, tv, books, games, movies - another 2-3 hours. So 7-8 hours seems to the the maximum any human being can work.
If you don't have family and friends and someone takes care of food and maintenance you can get an additional 4 hours. So anything beyond 10-12 hours seems physically impossible, and this is with 6 hours sleep, no family and all responsibilities taken care of.
If you think Elon Musk spends 2-3 hours per day on eating, then I'm not sure what I can say further.
You either have to source food from markets and cook it, have it cooked, eat at a restaurant or order out, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. All this takes time as does time to actually eat the food.
If you have a family multiply the time required. If you can do all the above in less than 3 hours it's worth sharing.
That's why working interrupted is a privilege, as other people take care of necessities for you. Elon musk working 14 hours is not anything special if he has people doing things for him, the average person does not have this privilege and anyone with similar privilege can do the same thing.
Trivial if you consider your time to be worth > $1,000 / hour.
Even still, I source my own food, cook it, and eat it three times a day and don't spend 3hrs/day every day doing so (and those who know me know I cook pretty fancy meals).
The point was about privilege and the average person. Obviously you will have more time if you have people taking care of things for you or are Usain Bolt with food like yourself, but this does not apply to the average person.
If they had the same privilege as Musk they too can work 14 hours a day so it's not noteworthy in any particular way.
> The ability to work uninterrupted is a privilege.
Yes, it is a privilege, but that doesn't negate that the rest of the post is completely false conjecture by one person.
> That's a total of 14 hours that can't be negotiated
If it can't be negotiated, then why do many people do it, especially ones who are more well off financially?
> 10 hours for work. Given the brain will not operate at that stretch you need distraction, so web, tv, books, games, movies - another 2-3 hours. So 7-8 hours seems to the the maximum any human being can work.
I'm not sure why I am even bothering to reply to that, but if you think that's true then honestly we aren't having an intelligent debate and so my time is being wasted.
> So anything beyond 10-12 hours [working] seems physically impossible
Same as above.
I still question those numbers, and even more so whether or not he can work effectively for that amount of time, though.
I agree completely with you here, the numbers are obviously padded vs what many normally think is "work". But the reality is that many actually work far more hours per day than they realize if the use a similar definition of "work" as what's used for Musk's number here. How many of us lay in bed thinking about a tough work problem? While quickly snarfing down food sitting at your desk, are you not reading emails or similar? Do you go to networking events and talk business? That's all "work" technically if you're being liberal with the definition (and honestly, it's not unreasonable to call that "work").
[1] When not at home, eg in the office, then I spend a lot more time getting/eating lunch, but its generally to get away from work so I would spend the time away from work anyway.
If you count all that stuff then the average person is probably working more than 8 hours too.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/elon-musk-goals/
The proportion of time Musk devotes to each company is derived from a description he gave at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June 2017. "The Boring Company is maybe 2 percent of my time, Neuralink 3-5 percent, Open AI another couple percent,” Musk said. The rest is split almost evenly between Tesla and SpaceX, he said, but “slightly more Tesla—it’s like a drama magnet."