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Comment by bfe | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk answered a similar question, and identified drive as the only relevant factor:

"How do you stay focused, motivated, and maintain enthusiasm when things don't go the way you'd hoped?

"I think my, sort of, drive to get it done is somewhat disconnected from hope, enthusiasm, or anything else... I actually just don't care about hope, or enthusiasm, motivation... I just give it everything I've got, irrespective of what the circumstances may be... You just keep going, and get it done."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOPgM7Sc2VQ

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They asked Neil Armstrong what he would do, if engine on Eagle broke and there was zero chance they would return from Moon. He answered: "I would try to fix it"

I can't see anyone saying anything else.

"An engine broke and you are stuck on the moon and will die horribly. What do you do?"

Seems your options are to either accept your fate and die, or try to live.

I love Elon Musk, but jesus christ, way to make the rest of us feel utterly human.

I'm beginning to be convinced he has some sort of mutation, seriously

We all have some sort of mutation.

TIL

I'm impressed by his scientific endeavors, but I have a hard time forgiving him for Paypal.

You mean the payment system that revolutionized online transactions between individuals and small companies?

Remember how hard it was to pay a freelancer/individual/small company for a service or product online before Paypal? It was very hard since banks would not approve merchant accounts for every bum that walked into their office :-), and don't even start on international transactions.

The fact that people started abusing them in unimaginable ways (prompting the draconian security measures) is not exactly Musk's fault, and the frozen account issues of the past years might be over once the competition finally gets its shit together (or at least there's other options now)...

Common lore has it that PayPal's problems began largely after eBay bought them - half their initial staff left after the first year. Early PayPal was very elitist and performance-driven, wheras eBay is famously bureaucratic.

It seems you are trying to be cute/follow the meme that it's good to hate on PayPal because of the account freezes and stuff as of late. However, before PayPal it was so hard to make a payment or transfer money to someone. They deserved the success they had for a groundbreaking product. Hating on Musk for decisions the company has made more recently is pure folly.

>It seems you are trying to be cute/follow the meme...

Because no one that's capable of independent thought will come to a different conclusion than you did right? There's no need to be condescending just because you don't agree with me.

Paypal is a shitty company because it fails to support sellers in any meaningful way. Part of this stems from the fact that it isn't a financial institution, so it will always lose to industry standard financial institutions if it tries to fight fraudulent charge backs. Unfortunately this renders the service close to useless for anyone trying to sell anything that's worth more than about $20.

It works great if you want to buy something, because you have a 100% chance of getting your money back if the seller doesn't come through. Unfortunately, people committing fraud against sellers also have a 100% chance of getting their money back, because Paypal doesn't even attempt to investigate these situations properly.

Instead of silently down-voting, why don't you counter with information that supports the opposite? Perhaps you know someone who has a good experience as a vendor that uses Paypal. Sadly, I myself know multiple dealers that shut their accounts down after they got tired of losing money to thieves.

Again... not Musk.

Correspondingly, way to make himself sound like an utter robot. It goes both ways.

Or someone who is completely out of touch with himself.

He sounds like a 40 year old men. I don't think mature persons should need any extra motivation to do work.

I don't think that "drive" is anything mysterious at all. It's somewhat the same drive that cause people to play rpg:s for hours and hours going into weeks. Not exactly the same obviously, but related.

I don't think it's the same at all, in the case of RPGs it's the carrot at the end of the stick that drives you. "If I just get +5 strength, I'll be the most awesome guy!"

It requires you to deal with much more of "delayed reward". The ability to deal with such has been described as a feature common to successful people. What I mean is that the strive towards the end goal doesn't have to be primarily rational, although for "delayed reward" to work I suspect that your sense of reward must be a bit more "closely tied to rationality".

I should disclaim english is not my primary language... but what is the fine line between 'drive' and 'motivation'?

I don't think he is really giving the deep reason why he is motivated (or driven, as you like) to get it done, he's just saying he strongly feels that he has to.

I believe he's implying that he doesn't have to try to motivate himself, because motivation just comes naturally and effortlessly to him.

> I actually just don't care about hope

I love it.

Makes sense. If you don't care about anything else but to finish what you're currently doing, you'll most probably get it done. Like if you really want to finish the film you're watching or the game you're playing or the book you're reading and you don't care about the baby crying or the phone ringing or the food burning or the burglar entering, you'll most probably get it done.

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