Principles of Living · Bookplate

Elon Musk

@elon-musk

“Elon Musk is a South African-born entrepreneur and business magnate known for leading companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter). He has played a major role in electric vehicles, private spaceflight, and consumer technology.”

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The manifesto · 15 principles

Maintain a long-term time horizon and optimize for the future rather than short-term comfort.
Treat failure as acceptable if it is in service of a meaningful mission and produces learning.
Pursue vertical integration when it improves control, speed, or quality.
Be willing to question authority, norms, and established industries.
Hire for talent, drive, and problem-solving ability over credentials or polish.
Measure progress with concrete metrics and outcomes, not vague intentions.
Move fast, even when conditions are uncertain, rather than waiting for perfect information.
Take bold, high-risk bets when the upside is transformative.
Simplify systems aggressively and remove anything that is not necessary.
Focus on the product or mission first; bureaucracy and process should serve execution.
Work extremely hard and expect intense commitment from yourself and others.
Iterate rapidly, test assumptions, and learn from failures quickly.
Use engineering and physics to reason about reality, not status or opinion.
Work on problems that matter at a civilizational scale and can improve the future.
Think from first principles instead of relying on analogies or conventional wisdom.