Practicing Wisdom — Issue #7

1. What I Learned This Week

The Operating System of Elon Musk

F. Scott Fitzgerald said “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." I recently listened to a podcast that covered the working habits of Elon Musk. While there is much to disdain about his politics it is also clear he is one of (if not the most) gifted entrepreneurs of all time. To that end, the Founders podcast How Elon Works was extremely interesting as it sought to highlight the working habits that led to his success.

Elon routinely claims that he is wired for war. It’s how he sees the game. For Musk, building a company isn’t a management task. It’s a campaign. A siege. A conquest. His method is brutal, brilliant, and unrelenting—and what makes it useful to study isn’t that it’s replicable, but that it reveals what extreme ambition requires.

This week’s dive into Musk’s principles—gleaned from David Senra’s 60-hour note synthesis of Walter Isaacson’s biography—reveals a philosophy of action forged in obsession, strategy games, and decades of first-principles thinking.

What makes Musk different isn’t just the scale of his ambition, but how his entire operating system is hardwired to a level of ambition most of us could only maintain for brief sprints. Everything about the mental, organizational and cultural aspects of how he operates are extreme, exhausting and… seemingly remarkably effective. At every step he deleted, he condenses, he removes friction between decision and execution. He collapses layers between problem and solution. He doesn’t hope people are urgent. He forces urgency into the system.

The Elon Musk operating system is best understood as a set of interlocking forces:

• First-principles analysis as a blunt object

• Unbreakable linkage between belief and behavior

• Vertical integration as a form of domination

• Control as non-negotiable

• Urgency as default oxygen

• Failure as a necessary tax on innovation

• Cost discipline as competitive weapon

• The mission is not the slogan. The mission is the filter.

This issue attempts to extract all of Musk’s major operating principles and mental models—so you can understand them, examine them, and ask:

What might it mean to build your system with this kind of clarity?

I. Mental Models

• First-Principles Thinking:
  Reduce everything to basic truths and reason upward.
  “He calculated the cost of a rocket’s materials. It was 1/50th of the final price. That’s an Idiot Index of 50x.”

• The Idiot Index:
  Ratio of cost to input materials. The higher the number, the dumber the system.
  “That part isn’t more complicated than a garage door opener. We can build it for $5K instead of $120K.”

• Maniacal Sense of Urgency:
  “Half the book is Elon yelling at people to move faster.”
  “‘This is stupid. Cut it in half.’ ‘We already did.’ ‘Then cut it in half again.’”

• Go to the Bottleneck:
  Problems don’t get solved from afar.
  “He jumps on a jet to England midweek to fix a part cost issue personally.”

II. Cultural and Management Principles

• Founder as Frontline General:
  “He’s crawling under rockets. He’s on the factory floor. He’s vomiting from stress but won’t stop.”

• Don’t Separate Design and Engineering:
  “If your hand is on the stove, you pull it off. But if it’s someone else’s, it takes longer.”
  Reject Camaraderie:
  “Wanting to be loved by your team is counterproductive.”
  “A-players don’t want to work with fuzzy thinkers.”

• Burn the Boats:
  “He intentionally takes away the option to quit. That’s how you force urgency.”

• No Middlemen:
  “He wants control over manufacturing, marketing, customer relationships—everything.”

• Belief as Fuel:
  “Even when he sounds crazy, people believe him because he believes it.”

III. Tactics and Behaviors

• Obsession with Cost:
  “The word ‘cost’ appears 158 times in the book.”
  “He doesn’t flinch at a $90K jet rental if it saves a workday. But won’t approve a $2K part.”
  Insist on Knowing Who Made the Requirement:
  “Don’t say ‘legal says’—tell me the name of the person who made the rule.”

• Constant Repetition of Principles:
  “Elon trains his org by repeating mantras over and over. Delete. Simplify. Go faster. Go to the problem.”

• Start with the Mission, Not the Market:
  “He didn’t start SpaceX to make money. He wanted to colonize Mars.”

IV. Psychological Traits

• No Patience, No Quit:
  “Patience is a virtue Elon lacks.”
  “I will never give up. And I mean never.”

• High Pain Tolerance:
  “Vomiting from stress. Screaming in his sleep. Still working 18-hour days.”

• Relentless Self-Belief:
  “If I had stayed at PayPal, it would be a trillion-dollar company.”

• Infinite Workload Capacity:
  “Tesla and SpaceX were both weeks from bankruptcy. He was funding both himself.”

Sources Referenced

“How Elon Works” — Founders Podcast (link)

2. Key Distillations

• "Go to the problem." - Don’t wait for reports. Fly to the factory. Put your hand on the stove.

• "Delete. Simplify. Compress." - Half the book is Elon yelling “DELETE.” The other half is him asking “Why the f*** is this so slow?”

• "Belief is transferable." - The source of his leadership is not charisma—it’s conviction so strong it infects others.

• "Showmanship is salesmanship." - The server rack at Zip2 was fake—but the perception was real, and perception moves capital.

• "You don’t need patience if you have planes." - He buys time with speed. And when time = $100,000/day, urgency is strategy.

• "Middlemen are a tax on ambition." - Elon abhors intermediaries. Directness is both a value and a weapon.

• "Fuzzy thinking is contagious." - A-players won’t tolerate unclear thinkers. Musk makes his clarity painful—but consistent.

3. One Contrarian Viewpoint

Work-life balance is a capitalist myth—if your mission is real.

Musk doesn’t just reject balance. He sees it as a threat. His view: missions worth doing are incompatible with comfort, and the illusion of balance creates a weak culture. You don't need everyone to agree—but you do need to be clear: are we here to win or to relax?

4. One Investable Idea

Vertical Integration as a Scarcity Play

In an era where outsourcing is default, Musk’s refusal to delegate core functions is becoming a strategic wedge. His lesson: if you control the process, you can bend cost curves and production timelines. In a world defined by supply chain fragility and cost inflation, vertical integration isn’t just defensible—it’s alpha.

Look for businesses that own the process from design through distribution. They’ll be slower to start, but harder to kill.

5. From the Archives: A Recall Highlight

“The longer something has survived, the more likely it is to survive.”

This is the Lindy Effect in action—and Elon seems to intuitively understand it. His refusal to follow modern corporate conventions often reflects an old-school belief: that enduring principles (like cost control, vertical integration, and founder control) outcompete trendy ones over time.