Elon Musk on Urgency: Why Slow and Steady Loses the Race
The saying “Patience is a virtue” is more harmful than it is beneficial in many situations.
Urgency is often more of a virtue than patience.
Without a sense of urgency important tasks will be patiently deferred indefinitely.
Elon is a man who fully grasps the necessity of urgency for accelerating important advancements.
Elon’s sense of urgency permeates many of his actions.
Elon even eats fast and has said “If there was a way that I could not eat, so I could work more, I would not eat. I wish there was a way to get nutrients without sitting down for a meal.”
Apparently when Elon goes to the washroom he even uses the urinal urgently.
Efficiency is an element of everything Elon does.
In a business context Elon’s sense of urgency manifests itself through the aggressive timelines he sets. This is especially brilliant. Aggressive timelines necessitate innovative thinking and an aggressive work ethic.
The timelines Elon sets are aggressive to the point of borderline unrealistic. He said his unrealistic expectations are a result of his optimism and it seems like they help his teams get more done in less time.
Elon and Tesla do occasionally end up pushing back timelines, but if you zoom out and look at what Tesla has accomplished in the past two decades it’s obvious the urgent timeline strategy is beneficial.
Even if Tesla and SpaceX companies’ projects are late, they almost accomplish what they set out to do, and are making great progress over time.
“I kind of say when I think it can occur, but then I’m typically optimistic about these things…It pretty much always happens, but not exactly on the timeframe.“
Urgency is certainly an asset when it helps expedite positive results.
Slow and steady will lose the race to urgent and steady every time.
“We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.” ~Charles F. Kettering
When Elon became the world’s wealthiest man he had already been the world’s most powerful man for some time…
This is because Elon is optimizing for his missions and not simply trying to rack up his net worth as much as possible. If maximum net worth was the goal SpaceX would likely be a publicly traded company, rather than privately owned.
Elon owns the majority of SpaceX (54% with 78% voting control) and since he does not have to answer to investors he has more time and energy available to roll out new innovations faster.
Interestingly this is what Ashlee Vance (Author of the bestselling biography of Elon) said when Elon became the world’s richest man officially:
“When I set out to write a bio on @elonmusk, he was worth a paltry few billion. Did not really think I’d end up writing about the richest person in the world because his companies were so risky.
How many people in a similar position would take a personal fortune of $200 million and bet it all on solar, electric cars and rockets in 2001?”
Tesla and SpaceX surviving the 2008 financial crash by the skin of their teeth and rising to dominate two of the most competitive industries in the world is undoubtedly one of the best business stories of all time.
Elon has attributed his engineering mind due to the genetics and upbringing he obtained from his father. Elon’s father is an Engineer also and Elon has explained how he grew up around an engineering environment.
Elon’s success does not surprise me, because Elon is a brilliant human being.
What others perceive as ultra risky do not understand the depths of Elon’s intelligence, his fierce work ethic, and his ability to get the job done better than anyone.
Elon is looking towards the future and planning with Tesla and Optimus humanoid robots and energy products to usher in amazing abundance for all.
Master Plan IV video explains in 1 minute 23 seconds.
As Elon plans a Starlink IPO his wealth is tracking towards a trillion USD and beyond.
Pushing the Limits: Elon Musk’s Drive to Expand Humanity’s Future
At the World Government Summit Elon was asked “You always seem to be pushing the human limit. You are always pushing the human limit. Why?”
Elon replied: “I think about what technology solution is required to achieve a particular goal. And then try to make as much progress as possible in that direction as possible…
Being a multi-planet species and being out there among the stars is important for the long term survival of humanity.
That’s one reason. Kind of like a life insurance policy for life collectively, life as we know it…
The part that I find personally the most motivating is that it creates a sense of adventure. And it makes people excited about the future…
And if you consider two futures:
One where we are forever confined to Earth until eventually something terrible happens.
Or another future where we are out there on many planets maybe going beyond the solar system. I think that second version is incredibly exciting and inspiring.
And there needs to be a reason to get up in the morning. Life can’t just be about solving problems. Otherwise, what’s the point?
There’s got to be things that people find inspiring and make life worth living.”
Elon is accelerating the rate at which humanity is exploring space and that is nothing short of amazing.
Elon Musk’s Mastery of the Pivot: Building Empires Through Adaptation
There are plenty of potholes on the roads of business as you climb the winding mountain of success.
Innovating, iterating, and focusing on what is working best seems to be the best way to climb.
With PayPal: “Initially the thought with PayPal was to create a conglomeration of financial services. So that you have one place where all of your financial services needs would be seamlessly integrated and work smoothly…
And then we had a little feature which is email payments.
And whenever we’d show the system off to someone. We’d show the hard part, which was the conglomeration of financial services. Which was quite difficult to put together. And nobody was interested…
Then we’d show email payments, which was actually quite easy, and everybody was interested.
So I think it’s important to take feedback from your environment. You know because you want to be as closed loop as possible.
So we focused on email payments and really trying to make that work. And that’s what really got things to take off.
But if we had not responded to what people said then we probably would not have been successful.
So it’s important to look for things like that and focus on them when you see them, and correct your prior assumptions.”
Adaptability is key.
Modifying the names of brands is one powerful way to adapt for the better as a business.
Elon has adapted the name of the school he created for his children from Ad Astra to Astra Nova for example. And now the name of the school is Synthesis.
Elon’s company Neuralink was originally called Neuralace.
The mission of Tesla was recently changed with a post on X from “Sustainable Abundance” to “Amazing Abundance.”
Constant adaptation and innovation is why Tesla vehicles do not have model years. This way Tesla can roll out new features rapidly, and consistently, rather than waiting for the next model year to implement improvements.
Elon’s companies are always adapting. Always innovating.
And it’s paying off. With each innovation Tesla increases their technology superiority in the auto industry.
Being willing to change your mind when new information is presented is a sign of a strong mind.
Stubbornly clinging to an idea that starts to appear inferior is a strategy that will start to render diminishing results.
When it comes to changing his mind two examples from Elon come to mind.
First is the old idea Tesla had of swapping out battery packs, for a faster charging experience. At one point Tesla was going in this direction, but they decided to abandon it as faster charging solutions have emerged.
Another more recent example is when Elon released a song about NFT’s as an NFT.
As you can see in the tweet above, Elon changed his mind.
Turns out NFT’s like the bored ape yacht club lost a ton of value. Elon was on point with under valuing NFT’s. They lack the intrinsic value and can be copied too easily in my opinion. They have lost around ~10X or more of their value since their peak.
Changing your mind might seem counterintuitive to other advice Elon gives, namely his praise for persistence.
Elon clarifies: “Yeah I think absolutely persistence is extremely important. You should not give up unless you’re forced to give up.
That principle can be misapplied if you happen to be trying to penetrate a brick wall with your head, you know, so you need to be cautious in always saying one should always persist and never give up because there are actually times when you should give up because you’re doing something in error.”
So the lesson of this segment is: Don’t be afraid to change your mind if the path you are on proves to be unpowerful.
Changing your mind when presented with more new information simply makes sense. Remaining unphased by new information is a sign of ignorance.
Don’t let others try to paint your ability to upgrade or change your decisions as a weakness. Because it is a strength.
With awe-inspiring ideas which are launching us into the future, Elon has benefited from first mover advantage in all his business ventures.
Elon even generated a massive amount of press for himself with his highly imaginative idea the Hyperloop.
The Hyperloop is Musk’s proposal for a faster new form of transportation between the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The system is proposed to use a partial vacuum to reduce aerodynamic drag, which it is theorized would allow for high speed travel with relatively low power.
SpaceX announced an open competition, geared towards university students and independent engineering teams, to design and build the best Hyperloop pod.
Then SpaceX built a testing Hyperloop rig and encouraged groups of teams from around the world to compete in 2017 and 2018.
The event was a great success.
As of 2025 the website on SpaceX no longer shows these images as they are more relevant to Elon’s business The Boring Company.
Grok Imagination is Amazing Image Visualization
However another way an Elon managed company can give your imagination a boost is Grok: Specifically, Grok Imagine.
With Grok Imagine you can visualize almost anything you can think of. Many images on Elonology.com and in the book are Grok images as well. A watermark in the bottom right corner can help you tell.
The images are very life like. Undoubtedly with progress in this area indistinguishability between Grok Imagine and real life will occur.
This is what Grok’s Imagine home page looks like currently. Every image you see is actually a short video.
Try Grok Imagine for yourself and get a better look!
Only by striving for perfection can you hope to come close to achieving it.
Elon is constantly striving for perfection with his companies.
At STCP Future Fest he said:
“Aspirationally, we’re in pursuit of the platonic ideal of the perfect car. Who knows what that looks like actually, but you want to try to make every element of the car as flawless as possible…
There will always be some degree of imperfection, but we try to minimize that and create a car that is just delightful in every way.”
Perfection might be an impossible ideal but by striving for it you can get closer to achieving the idea.
When SpaceX was told to wait to launch rockets in the U.S. Elon went and found an island in the Pacific he could use straight away.
Elon once jumped on his private jet and flew to England to take a needed machine tool to a factory in France and speed up production.
When Tesla needed to test a prototype in the cold he hired an ice-cream truck with a big refrigerated trailer.
When there is a will there is often a way.
When you are willing to improvise and take action to solve the problems you face this will help you find your way through the darkness of despair and into the brightness of success.
Elon is real and more often wears custom t-shirts than he wears a suit. At the Axel Springer round table with a dozen other CEO’s, where Elon won the Axel Springer award, he was the only CEO not wearing a suit or tie.
Elon’s relatability and openness is part of the reason why many millions (if not billions) of people know his name. Certainly his strategies are working well.
Remarkability is a strong strategy so stay different and don’t be afraid to break the mould and stand out.
With products like the Cybertruck and rockets to Mars in 2026 Elon is playing a huge roll in making the future look like the future moreso than ever before.
