Recently I read the book Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance (Amazon affiliate link), and there are many lessons to share with you. Elon is the world’s richest person and owner of many companies: Tesla, SpaceX, Nuralink, Borning company, etc.
We can learn from his journey how he built this mega empire. You can implement these life lessons to improve your life. Here are the top 6 secrets from the book.
Let’s dive!
Showers
Yes, you read it right, showers are fantastic, or I would say the idea generator. When back in 2015, Elon Musk was doing Reddit AMA (ask me anything), someone asked him what daily habit has the most significant impact on your life.
He simply replied, showering.
Elon Musk is absolutely right about having long showers to get more tangible ideas. I wrote an article on showering and also how to take notes, in which I also mentioned that showering is the place where we spend time alone without any electronics or life’s hustle and bustle.
I always prefer to shower if I am working on a challenging project, especially if I get stuck. Showering also helps to recalibrate our inner compass and makes us think outside the box.
Sometimes we get really innovative ideas, and to capture those ideas; I actually bought a waterproof showering notepad.
Gets a lot of his ideas during long showers or late at night pacing around the house.
— Elon Musk
All successful people have these traits in common. I also read about Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google; he loves to pace while conducting meetings or thinking about new ideas.
Bill Gates loves to isolate himself for Think Week without the internet for a week. I am a huge fan of a cabin, an isolated place in the woods, or maybe close to the ocean to rethink life.
If you want to boost your productivity, try to take long showers to get more ideas.
Reading
Reading is one of the best habits that power Elon Musk’s success. Elon started to show interest in reading books at a very young age.
He is voracious and loves to read on almost any topic. Once someone asked how did you get an idea to build a rocket. He replied,
I read books.
We know that every successful person is a voracious reader. I remember once Warren Buffett said he consumes 500 pages a day, and that’s how compound interest built.
Let’s take the example of Warren Buffett, a legendary investor, and his friend Charlie Munger.
Reading is the backbone to creating ideas and the best source of continuous learning.
Okay, back to Elon Musk, his brother Kambal said that Elon used to read 10+ hours a day. Sometimes he finished two books in one day. Here is the quote from the book.
At one point, I ran out of books to read at the school library and the neighborhood library.
— Elon Musk
Then after finishing all the books, he started to read the Britannica encyclopedia to know and learn more about things.
This is one of the habits I developed when I moved to North America, and I am so fortunate that I read every day for 50+ minutes to fill my reading appetite. Maybe that is one of the reasons I never ran out of content ideas.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, Elon Musk is the wealthiest person globally and one of the top entrepreneurs. He owns many innovative companies, and we can learn a lot from his success and failures.
I believe if we just implement these two ways in our life. We can see significant improvements. Elon Musk is known for being super productive, and I will take these two habits to boost productivity.
Tip: Next time you are looking for a solution or a new business idea, try to take a long shower and/or read to get innovative ideas.
Thank you for reading!
