[Book Notes] Learning the Key Abilities of Iron Man Elon Musk from 《He's Playing for Real!》
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《He's Playing for Real!: The 10 Abilities "Iron Man" Elon Musk Uses to Change the Future》 Authors: Mario Yang, G Wu, Vista Cheng
One-line summary: Think! Debate! Make changes like Iron Man! Build insight, execution, and leadership! Bet on your vision!
Who is Musk?
Elon Musk, often called the most innovative entrepreneur since Steve Jobs, has founded one successful company after another, and every move he makes brings astonishing changes to the world.
Musk was born in South Africa, and he figured out very early what he wanted to work toward. In college he asked himself: "What will most affect the future of humanity?" His answer was five fields: the internet, space exploration, clean energy, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. Every action he has taken since then has been about realizing these visions. The first three are currently his main focus — he founded X.com (the predecessor of PayPal), SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, and has achieved major things in these fields.
Why can Musk pull it off?
《He's Playing for Real!》 sums up 10 key abilities Musk uses to create the future. Here are the three I think matter most:
- Insight: foresee the future, and think deeply enough to grasp the essence of things
- Execution: actively pull reality closer to the future, define your own rules, and never let go until you get it
- Leadership: pool everyone's strengths, and roll up your sleeves to solve problems alongside your team
OK, that was the book's point of view. Here's what I want to say:
Why do you like reading about successful people?
Bookstores and the internet are full of books and articles telling you how to become a successful person, and the ideas are basically all the same:
Integrity, persistence, pursuit of perfection, focus on goals, attention to detail, vision, great public speaking, skill at motivating teams, connections, drive to act, ......
They tell you these people succeeded because they had these traits. Sure, we can't deny that. But the point isn't how they succeeded. Think about why you're interested in these books and articles in the first place: because "you want to become a successful person like them". So your focus should be on how to make their traits become "your" traits.
How do you make the change?
So how do you do that? I can't tell you, because I'm still figuring it out myself — if anyone knows the way, please do tell me! The only thing I'm sure of is that only "you" can make this change happen. Only when you're willing, and hungry, to become someone like them do you have a real shot at changing.
The advice I can give you (and myself) is this:
Every time you make a decision, think: what would Musk (or anyone you want to become) do? Why would he/she make that choice? What is your choice? What's the difference between you and him/her?
Keeping this thought in mind at all times is, I think, the most promising way to actually change.