7 ms·

Elon Musk needs a vacation

123 points by cocoflunchy 11y ago

icehawk219 11y ago
I thought the entire purpose of SpaceX was him wanting to take a vacation.
- jeron 11y ago
  it's also so he can be buried in Mars - a permanent vacation.
gsibble 11y ago
I can't imagine the stress he goes through. Not surprised that it gets to him from time to time.
sandworm101 11y ago
When work is a choice, it isn't really work. This guy can take a vacation whenever he likes. He doesn't have a boss that will fire him. He doesn't have to worry about making rent each month. His concept of "taking a vacation" is very different then mine, yours, or most anyone else who isn't a billionaire. If Elon Musk is stressed, he has the option of separating himself from that stress. He works because he wants to work. Employees suffer stress from which they cannot separate themselves without, in short order, creating new stresses. Elon will not be homeless next month if he stops going to work today. A psychologist might say that his stress is therefore a product of his ego, his daily choices, rather than of his environment. It is internal to his personality. That's probably why he finds it so hard to separate.
- theli0nheart 11y ago
  You really think Mr. Musk could take a month off starting tomorrow with no advance notice to SpaceX or Tesla with no ramifications? These are C Corps with boards, investors, and other stakeholders that wouldn't turn a blind eye to that. Musk is not a deity who can do whatever he wants. He can be fired just like anyone else who clocks in and out of a day job--only difference is who pulls the trigger.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    I did not say that. I said that it was his choice, not that such a choice would not have consequences. But he has the choice and that makes him different. The vast majority of employees do not have a choice. Elon can reduce the amount of his time spent on SpaceX or anything else without drastic impact on his person or his family. Employees cannot.
- nkozyra 11y ago
  This is an oversimplification. Being 'the boss' means you work to meet often unrealistic expectations you've set for yourself. It doesn't relieve you from stress, fear, deadlines. Founders often perceive this feeling as a representation that they are the sole driver of the company's successes and failures. That means vacation represents a period of regression. It makes taking one essentially a nonstarter. Worse, this behavior can be cyclical. Take a weekend off and you feel 'behind.'. Then you work twice as long next week, perceiving it as barely catching up. Then even harder to get back to the pace you thought you were on before. Add to that the pressures of having billions of dollars and the livelihood of thousands resting on your expertise and the eyes of millions watching your every move ... It's a hard habit to break. Even if you enjoy your job, the stress of what you believe it should be can add emotional and physical stress.
- mej10 11y ago
  If you feel that you are the only person capable of doing a job that the future of humanity depends on -- it isn't really a choice. Even on a slightly less dire level -- CEOs have their employees and employees' families fate resting on their shoulders. It isn't easy to trust someone else to do it right. You can't just take a month off and hope everything goes ok. When you have a moral imperative to work it isn't so easy as taking a vacation anytime you want.
  - toothbrush 11y ago
    > If you feel that you are the only person capable of doing a job that the future of humanity depends on ... That actually sounds like a messiah complex to me.
    - sandworm101 11y ago
      I'd call it a trump complex, a common malady of new-money billionaires.
- frame_perfect 11y ago
  He can't just quit like that. He has a reputation to uphold.
- vidarh 11y ago
  > Elon will not be homeless next month if he stops going to work today. He will not be homeless next month, but he has personal debt the size of which could cause a small bank to fail that was used to fund Tesla and possibly SpaceX. He will likely remain a very rich man, but at the moment his fortune is very much tied to the success of Tesla and SpaceX, so he also does not have as much freedom as one might expect.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    He has smart lawyers all around him. He and any family members surely have access to well-funded trusts beyond the reach of any bankruptcy proceeding.
- scott_s 11y ago
  He also doesn't have someone to give him permission to take a break. Psychologically, it changes things. In the latter part of grad school, my advisor was no longer at my university, and I was working mostly by myself. I worked every day. Not only was there no one to tell me, "Hey, take a day", I also felt, sharply, that any day I took off just meant I was one day further from my goal. Saying "he has the option of separating himself from that stress" is true, but I don't think it captures the mental trap that people feel they are in. I also don't want to ascribe it to ego, because that has negative connotations. I think of it as a combination of not having an outside party to tell you to take some time, and working towards a goal with a single-minded focus.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    He does have a person. He has himself. He needs to psychologically grant himself permission. It's all in his head. Your situation was different. Your authority figure was absent. That's different situation than not having one.
    - scott_s 11y ago
      My entire point is that having yourself is categorically different than having an outsider. This is one reason why even elite athletes have coaches. Many elite athletes will train too much, left to themselves - it's hard to avoid the feeling of "I have not done enough". We're more receptive to a different person, that we trust, when they say "You've done enough. More will harm. Rest." In my case, I'm unsure if having my advisor present would have made a difference. At that point, my work was almost completely self-driven - but that's rather the point of grad school. You're supposed to get to the point that you're calling the shots; the "authority" status of your advisor is supposed to diminish over time. But I'm also not convinced that having an absent authority figure is any different than not having one be design; I don't see how I would have acted any different if for some reason I had officially no longer had an advisor.
  - dpacmittal 11y ago
    I agree. Been freelancing for a while and I'm never able to meet my own expectations. The standards I've set for myself are way too high. It sounds like I have control over my expectations, but its not that simple. Now I'm trying to do my own startup and its worse than ever. I'll probably go see a therapist in a week or so (when I get time!!!)
- billmalarky 11y ago
  Elon Musk is incredibly attached to his companies and feels personally responsible for their success (he probably is). It doesn't help that SpaceX is arguably one of the most important human endeavors of all time (http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/5-stephen-hawkings-warning-abandon-earth-or-face-extinction http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/5-stephen-hawkings-warni...). Having started a project that became successful for a time (though minute in comparison to Musk's projects) I can safely say that walking away when I had to was one of the hardest thing to do. There were people that counted on me, and they were really let down. It felt bad. And we're talking "fun internet community" not "future of the human race."
moron4hire 11y ago
There are different types of vacation. I don't like just laying on the beach, either. But I still take a break away from my work to be able to do other things. It's during these times I work on my other hobby projects. From the outside, it looks like I'm working, but for me, it's all fun and I'm more relaxed than I would be sitting in a hot tub somewhere.
sharkweek 11y ago
Friend worked at one of the US's biggest law firms clerking for a few years. He was there during one of the largest patent suits of all time, so they were billing an insane amount of hours (he was easily putting in 100 hour weeks the six months leading up to the trial). Anyways, case settles weeks before trial was supposed to start. Law firm gives everyone in the office a free two weeks off to unwind from such a massive stretch of work. He enjoyed the time off, with only one minor detour to the office for like 2-3 hours one day during the time off and almost everyone above him was there working. He asked his boss what was up and the guy basically said he had nothing better to do so he just decided to work during that stretch. I love working hard, I love being productive, but I really hope I'm never at a point in my life where I can't take two weeks off to enjoy doing something other than work. Of course I'm not inventing electric cars and space rockets, so there's that.
- JTon 11y ago
  Interesting anecdote. Reminds me of that expression that goes something like "If you choose a career in something you love, it no longer becomes work". Pretty sure I butchered that, perhaps someone can sweep in with the proper quote
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life"
    - ChuckMcM 11y ago
      Interesting how this sometimes plays out though, a colleague of mine loves writing operating systems has found the number of people who want to do that steadily decreasing to the point where it becomes challenging to find paid work. I've suggested to him that the new "operating systems" are unikernels and microservices but he's been at it so long that he sees those as hosted applications rather than operating systems, and he has been at it so long, many of the views are ingrained deeply.
declan 11y ago
I suspect these kind of articles would be more useful if they were written by or summarizing advice by former CEOs who were in a similar position (multiple companies, lots of stress, regulatory uncertainty).
- T3RMINATED 11y ago
  declan needs a vacation too where is his news article! mine too.
- irl_zebra 11y ago
  My thinking is that in these cases it depends more on the individual person than their position and circumstances. Some CEOs probably really thrive by being able to take a few weeks a year off to relax on the beach, but with someone like Musk (from what I've read), I think it's likely that would not be too relaxing or productive.
pinkrooftop 11y ago
Sometimes the best ideas about X pop up when you're doing Y
- tricolon 11y ago
  That's why Elon has a few companies
  - nashashmi 11y ago
    And running one company is like a vacation from the other.
T3RMINATED 11y ago
i need a vacation too.. where is my headline
jostmey 11y ago
Maybe it is us who needs a change in mindset. We say he needs a vacation and he is obviously exhausted, but he is succeeding at creating a rocket company. That's right, a rocket company. Maybe more of us need to dream bigger, risk everything, and be willing to work just as hard.
- yid 11y ago
  > Maybe more of us need to dream bigger, risk everything, and be willing to work just as hard. What a curious take-away. I read it as even a hardened workaholic like Musk will crack a little without taking a break.
- xj9 11y ago
  This is the mindset I work for. I have dreams of varying size and scope, but I only let myself chase the biggest and best of those. I want my life to positively affect my friends, my family, and humanity at large. The hardest part, in my experience, of trying to live big dreams is avoiding becoming overwhelmed. There are so many details involved and it is easy to become discouraged when you become aware of them all. The best coping mechanism I've come up with works a lot like scrum (which is the best way to go for teams) and consists of writing a lot of to-do lists. Every week or two I review all of the lists I've made and compile a new snapshot that cuts out all of the things I now realize are unimportant or irrelevant. I feel like this encourages a nice forward-looking mindset, anchored in the present, but influenced by the past. The key, I think, is working as hard as you can sustainably handle. Tools like scrum do a good job of helping you find that sweet spot.
  - iamgoat 11y ago
    I recommend reading the short book/guide The Underachiever's Manifesto as an alternative view (which someone here had suggested awhile back). Decide on the right amount of effort, place, and time to do something good instead of great. The person who will care the most about anything you do is yourself and good enough is good enough for most things in life. Especially when you're here for a short amount of time and there's so much you want to do.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dankohn1 11y ago
Can I give a quick plug for Neal Stephenson's new novel, Seveneves? The character Sean Probst, an eccentric billionaire rocket entrepreneur, is very much based on Musk, and is a lot of fun. If you're going to potentially burn out in your job, having Iron Man and a Stephenson character partially based on you is not a bad way to go. (I also recommend the recent Ashlee Vance Musk biography.)
- sjclemmy 11y ago
  Ha ha - I just read Seveneves, the Probst character was quite funny. While I've enjoyed Stephenson's novels in the past, I don't think Seveneves is his best. It's a little bit formulaic, far fetched and plodding. I preferred Reamde. It's the only thing I've ever read that gave me an insight into the mindset of the mid-west gun loving conservative that seems to maintain the status quo of gun law in the US.
xacaxulu 11y ago
#IStandWithElon
dave1619 11y ago
I think Elon needs a stellar COO to run operations for Tesla so he can focus on overall vision and product. I think he's forced to be involved in so many day-to-day operation tasks that it crowds the little time he does have.

123 points by cocoflunchy 11y ago

icehawk219 11y ago

I thought the entire purpose of SpaceX was him wanting to take a vacation.

jeron 11y ago
it's also so he can be buried in Mars - a permanent vacation.

gsibble 11y ago

I can't imagine the stress he goes through. Not surprised that it gets to him from time to time.

sandworm101 11y ago

When work is a choice, it isn't really work. This guy can take a vacation whenever he likes. He doesn't have a boss that will fire him. He doesn't have to worry about making rent each month. His concept of "taking a vacation" is very different then mine, yours, or most anyone else who isn't a billionaire. If Elon Musk is stressed, he has the option of separating himself from that stress. He works because he wants to work. Employees suffer stress from which they cannot separate themselves without, in short order, creating new stresses. Elon will not be homeless next month if he stops going to work today. A psychologist might say that his stress is therefore a product of his ego, his daily choices, rather than of his environment. It is internal to his personality. That's probably why he finds it so hard to separate.

theli0nheart 11y ago
You really think Mr. Musk could take a month off starting tomorrow with no advance notice to SpaceX or Tesla with no ramifications? These are C Corps with boards, investors, and other stakeholders that wouldn't turn a blind eye to that. Musk is not a deity who can do whatever he wants. He can be fired just like anyone else who clocks in and out of a day job--only difference is who pulls the trigger.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  I did not say that. I said that it was his choice, not that such a choice would not have consequences. But he has the choice and that makes him different. The vast majority of employees do not have a choice. Elon can reduce the amount of his time spent on SpaceX or anything else without drastic impact on his person or his family. Employees cannot.
nkozyra 11y ago
This is an oversimplification. Being 'the boss' means you work to meet often unrealistic expectations you've set for yourself. It doesn't relieve you from stress, fear, deadlines. Founders often perceive this feeling as a representation that they are the sole driver of the company's successes and failures. That means vacation represents a period of regression. It makes taking one essentially a nonstarter. Worse, this behavior can be cyclical. Take a weekend off and you feel 'behind.'. Then you work twice as long next week, perceiving it as barely catching up. Then even harder to get back to the pace you thought you were on before. Add to that the pressures of having billions of dollars and the livelihood of thousands resting on your expertise and the eyes of millions watching your every move ... It's a hard habit to break. Even if you enjoy your job, the stress of what you believe it should be can add emotional and physical stress.
mej10 11y ago
If you feel that you are the only person capable of doing a job that the future of humanity depends on -- it isn't really a choice. Even on a slightly less dire level -- CEOs have their employees and employees' families fate resting on their shoulders. It isn't easy to trust someone else to do it right. You can't just take a month off and hope everything goes ok. When you have a moral imperative to work it isn't so easy as taking a vacation anytime you want.
- toothbrush 11y ago
  > If you feel that you are the only person capable of doing a job that the future of humanity depends on ... That actually sounds like a messiah complex to me.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    I'd call it a trump complex, a common malady of new-money billionaires.
frame_perfect 11y ago
He can't just quit like that. He has a reputation to uphold.
vidarh 11y ago
> Elon will not be homeless next month if he stops going to work today. He will not be homeless next month, but he has personal debt the size of which could cause a small bank to fail that was used to fund Tesla and possibly SpaceX. He will likely remain a very rich man, but at the moment his fortune is very much tied to the success of Tesla and SpaceX, so he also does not have as much freedom as one might expect.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  He has smart lawyers all around him. He and any family members surely have access to well-funded trusts beyond the reach of any bankruptcy proceeding.
scott_s 11y ago
He also doesn't have someone to give him permission to take a break. Psychologically, it changes things. In the latter part of grad school, my advisor was no longer at my university, and I was working mostly by myself. I worked every day. Not only was there no one to tell me, "Hey, take a day", I also felt, sharply, that any day I took off just meant I was one day further from my goal. Saying "he has the option of separating himself from that stress" is true, but I don't think it captures the mental trap that people feel they are in. I also don't want to ascribe it to ego, because that has negative connotations. I think of it as a combination of not having an outside party to tell you to take some time, and working towards a goal with a single-minded focus.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  He does have a person. He has himself. He needs to psychologically grant himself permission. It's all in his head. Your situation was different. Your authority figure was absent. That's different situation than not having one.
  - scott_s 11y ago
    My entire point is that having yourself is categorically different than having an outsider. This is one reason why even elite athletes have coaches. Many elite athletes will train too much, left to themselves - it's hard to avoid the feeling of "I have not done enough". We're more receptive to a different person, that we trust, when they say "You've done enough. More will harm. Rest." In my case, I'm unsure if having my advisor present would have made a difference. At that point, my work was almost completely self-driven - but that's rather the point of grad school. You're supposed to get to the point that you're calling the shots; the "authority" status of your advisor is supposed to diminish over time. But I'm also not convinced that having an absent authority figure is any different than not having one be design; I don't see how I would have acted any different if for some reason I had officially no longer had an advisor.
- dpacmittal 11y ago
  I agree. Been freelancing for a while and I'm never able to meet my own expectations. The standards I've set for myself are way too high. It sounds like I have control over my expectations, but its not that simple. Now I'm trying to do my own startup and its worse than ever. I'll probably go see a therapist in a week or so (when I get time!!!)
billmalarky 11y ago
Elon Musk is incredibly attached to his companies and feels personally responsible for their success (he probably is). It doesn't help that SpaceX is arguably one of the most important human endeavors of all time (http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/5-stephen-hawkings-warning-abandon-earth-or-face-extinction http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/5-stephen-hawkings-warni...). Having started a project that became successful for a time (though minute in comparison to Musk's projects) I can safely say that walking away when I had to was one of the hardest thing to do. There were people that counted on me, and they were really let down. It felt bad. And we're talking "fun internet community" not "future of the human race."

moron4hire 11y ago

There are different types of vacation. I don't like just laying on the beach, either. But I still take a break away from my work to be able to do other things. It's during these times I work on my other hobby projects. From the outside, it looks like I'm working, but for me, it's all fun and I'm more relaxed than I would be sitting in a hot tub somewhere.

sharkweek 11y ago

Friend worked at one of the US's biggest law firms clerking for a few years. He was there during one of the largest patent suits of all time, so they were billing an insane amount of hours (he was easily putting in 100 hour weeks the six months leading up to the trial). Anyways, case settles weeks before trial was supposed to start. Law firm gives everyone in the office a free two weeks off to unwind from such a massive stretch of work. He enjoyed the time off, with only one minor detour to the office for like 2-3 hours one day during the time off and almost everyone above him was there working. He asked his boss what was up and the guy basically said he had nothing better to do so he just decided to work during that stretch. I love working hard, I love being productive, but I really hope I'm never at a point in my life where I can't take two weeks off to enjoy doing something other than work. Of course I'm not inventing electric cars and space rockets, so there's that.

JTon 11y ago
Interesting anecdote. Reminds me of that expression that goes something like "If you choose a career in something you love, it no longer becomes work". Pretty sure I butchered that, perhaps someone can sweep in with the proper quote
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life"
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    Interesting how this sometimes plays out though, a colleague of mine loves writing operating systems has found the number of people who want to do that steadily decreasing to the point where it becomes challenging to find paid work. I've suggested to him that the new "operating systems" are unikernels and microservices but he's been at it so long that he sees those as hosted applications rather than operating systems, and he has been at it so long, many of the views are ingrained deeply.

declan 11y ago

I suspect these kind of articles would be more useful if they were written by or summarizing advice by former CEOs who were in a similar position (multiple companies, lots of stress, regulatory uncertainty).

T3RMINATED 11y ago
declan needs a vacation too where is his news article! mine too.
irl_zebra 11y ago
My thinking is that in these cases it depends more on the individual person than their position and circumstances. Some CEOs probably really thrive by being able to take a few weeks a year off to relax on the beach, but with someone like Musk (from what I've read), I think it's likely that would not be too relaxing or productive.

pinkrooftop 11y ago

Sometimes the best ideas about X pop up when you're doing Y

tricolon 11y ago
That's why Elon has a few companies
- nashashmi 11y ago
  And running one company is like a vacation from the other.

T3RMINATED 11y ago

i need a vacation too.. where is my headline

jostmey 11y ago

Maybe it is us who needs a change in mindset. We say he needs a vacation and he is obviously exhausted, but he is succeeding at creating a rocket company. That's right, a rocket company. Maybe more of us need to dream bigger, risk everything, and be willing to work just as hard.

yid 11y ago
> Maybe more of us need to dream bigger, risk everything, and be willing to work just as hard. What a curious take-away. I read it as even a hardened workaholic like Musk will crack a little without taking a break.
xj9 11y ago
This is the mindset I work for. I have dreams of varying size and scope, but I only let myself chase the biggest and best of those. I want my life to positively affect my friends, my family, and humanity at large. The hardest part, in my experience, of trying to live big dreams is avoiding becoming overwhelmed. There are so many details involved and it is easy to become discouraged when you become aware of them all. The best coping mechanism I've come up with works a lot like scrum (which is the best way to go for teams) and consists of writing a lot of to-do lists. Every week or two I review all of the lists I've made and compile a new snapshot that cuts out all of the things I now realize are unimportant or irrelevant. I feel like this encourages a nice forward-looking mindset, anchored in the present, but influenced by the past. The key, I think, is working as hard as you can sustainably handle. Tools like scrum do a good job of helping you find that sweet spot.
- iamgoat 11y ago
  I recommend reading the short book/guide The Underachiever's Manifesto as an alternative view (which someone here had suggested awhile back). Decide on the right amount of effort, place, and time to do something good instead of great. The person who will care the most about anything you do is yourself and good enough is good enough for most things in life. Especially when you're here for a short amount of time and there's so much you want to do.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dankohn1 11y ago

Can I give a quick plug for Neal Stephenson's new novel, Seveneves? The character Sean Probst, an eccentric billionaire rocket entrepreneur, is very much based on Musk, and is a lot of fun. If you're going to potentially burn out in your job, having Iron Man and a Stephenson character partially based on you is not a bad way to go. (I also recommend the recent Ashlee Vance Musk biography.)

sjclemmy 11y ago
Ha ha - I just read Seveneves, the Probst character was quite funny. While I've enjoyed Stephenson's novels in the past, I don't think Seveneves is his best. It's a little bit formulaic, far fetched and plodding. I preferred Reamde. It's the only thing I've ever read that gave me an insight into the mindset of the mid-west gun loving conservative that seems to maintain the status quo of gun law in the US.

xacaxulu 11y ago

#IStandWithElon

dave1619 11y ago

I think Elon needs a stellar COO to run operations for Tesla so he can focus on overall vision and product. I think he's forced to be involved in so many day-to-day operation tasks that it crowds the little time he does have.