Elon Musk: Things We Could Learn From The SpaceX CEO

Many of us have already heard of Elon Musk, for sure. Born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa, he eventually moved to the United States, where he got his bachelor’s degree in physics and economics. Suffice to say, the knowledge he has learned in those two courses have since paid off. His journey as a businessman began quite impressively, with one of his ventures being the founding of the online bank, which we now know as PayPal. Nowadays, the billionaire is most known as the CEO of the electric car company Tesla and SpaceX.

Of course, his journey isn’t without its challenges and learned lessons. Well, that’s precisely what we’ll be talking about in this article. Perhaps we can take a couple of things to heart by the end of this article.

Communication Is Key

We all know that no man is an island, and so is this multi-billion-dollar businessman. While he may be the face of SpaceX and Tesla, there’s no denying that the people working for these companies also deserve credit for their hard work. Now, how do you make the best out of the people you work with? Well, for starters, we should know how to communicate effectively with our colleagues. Let them know what needs to be done. Plus, it also helps to be a good listener: perhaps they can suggest a better way to handle the task at hand, so why stop them from doing it?

Set Your Priorities

A journey doesn’t just include the starting and ending points. There will be more than a few hurdles and obstacles along the way, many of which often come in the form of distractions. Well, for that, it’s always a must to recognize which things require a higher degree of attention, so knowing what to prioritize first undoubtedly helps you in the long run. Set a time to focus on working on your goal, though, of course, it’s also important to know when to take some time off and get some rest.

Create A Routine

Now, some of these priorities may be too big to deal with in just a few hours or even a day. For that, it wouldn’t hurt to divide it into smaller, more manageable tasks. While you’re at it, make a schedule showing what you need to do. You can start by creating a daily to-do list. Soon, you could even begin working on your plan for the week, followed by the month. Before you know it, you can finally establish what you want to be done within the year with this schedule. A habit that ultimately becomes a great investment for your future, for sure.

Keep On Learning

It’s safe to say we’ve all reached that point where we just want to stop trying to achieve something because perfecting it is impossible since nothing is perfect after all, right? Well, the best way to overcome this heavy weight on our shoulders is to have a change of perspective. There’s no such thing as perfect, but there is better, so let’s be better. Of course, this means that we shouldn’t be afraid to keep on learning, even when we’ve finally reached our goal. In fact, besides the course you earned a college degree on, also study topics from other subjects. You might even find plenty of concepts, principles, and philosophies to help you in your future endeavors.

Accept Failure

Speaking of learning, there are many ways to discover new things. Along with the lessons we learn from our parents and teachers and what we’ve read in books, another mentor that deserves credit is failure. While doing it correctly on the first try is great, not doing so shouldn’t be something we should be afraid of. For one, through failing, we can learn what we need to do right the next time around to prevent us from making that same mistake again. Musk’s earlier endeavors with SpaceX had some bumps here and there, including several rocket failures. That didn’t stop him, though, and look how much the company has improved since then.