The Gift (And Lessons In Self-Care) Of Elon Musk’s Appearance On The Joe Rogan Experience
The headlines were all about this being a “bizarre” podcast, and of course, that Elon drank whisky and smoked a joint, and clearly this is the sign he’s lost his mind while Tesla executives flee and their stock crashes. I watched the entire 2 hour 37 minute video and 1,000,000% disagree.
1) It’s not a bizarre podcast. It’s a rare opportunity and interview that gets very deep, very lucid, very focused on a lot of long-view thinking topics that not many people consider because we’re so firmly entrenched up our own assholes with micro-term daily minutiae, that we don’t get a chance to spend cycles on such topics as the impact and morality of AI, solving LA traffic problems with tunnels and hyperloops, interplanetary colonization, brain/machine communication links, transcending the limits of human life expectancy, eliminating pollution, high capacity energy generation and storage, saving lives of drivers, passengers and pedestrians with software, etc. with one of the best minds currently on the planet in a long-form medium > 280 characters of tweets at a time. Most people in their busy daily lives don’t get the experience of sitting and talking with someone like this for an extended period of time to explore various topics and seeing how their mind works without a filter. At best, they might be able to focus on a 20-minute TED Talk amuse bouche, or read an article or non-fiction book on one of the topics if they have the time and attention to finish it. But never something as dense with ideas and as deep down the rabbit hole as this one goes at times.
2) Elon is clearly exhausted. Fatigued even. Depressed. He can’t sleep. He’s Tweeting late at night from the factory floor. He’s Tweeting things that should have been discussed with his Board of Directors before it was made public. He’s snapping at random trolls. You can see it in his eyes and in his posture and in his speech patterns. He’s trying to derisk TSLA stock by taking it private to insulate it against critics or Presidential Twitter Tantrums so his teams can stay focused on the mission at hand, and then has to admit is unable to and was wrong about the approach. He gets portrayed as this superhero, Tony Stark-like guy with insatisable energy, creativity, and ability to make the impossible happen. But he’s just a human being. He has the same number of hours in his day as you and I do. And you see that here. He makes mistakes. He’s cognizant of his own shortcomings. He’s a bigger critic of himself than anyone else can be. But the wheels are still turning. The passion is still there. He can’t shut it off. But he does need some serious time off. We all do. In the narrative of Elon Musk, we’ll look back at this as one of the lower times, followed by a rapid ascension back up after some major milestones are hit either with Telsa, SpaceX, The Boring Company, hyperloops, or whatever else comes next. On a long enough timeline, no one bats 1.000 forever. But he also needs to focus on himself. I’m not sure a single dip in Joe’s isolation tank will do it, but he does need to find something that will work for him as part of daily, weekly or monthly regimen to restore himself.
3) So what if he drank whisky and took a single puff of a joint (and it’s clear from his question of whether it was a joint, and then his face afterwards that this does not happen frequently)? We all have. Both are legal in California. And it wasn’t in the Tesla workplace. (Tesla’s Code Of Business Conduct & Ethics is listed here: http://ir.tesla.com/code-business-conduct-and-ethics-0) If Elon is doing other illegal drugs or doing them at the workplace, fine, then there’s a case for some other action. But this part is a headline-grabbing non-event.
4) Elon clearly needs a strong COO to help him out. He’s taking on too much of the day-to-day operations and stress himself, and he needs to delegate and load balance. He also needs to take some time off, and I’m sure he’s saying to himself like we probably all say to ourselves, “There’s no good time to take time off, but right now is the worst time.” His email to staff about some new promotions and restructuring after the departure of some senior execs this week (https://www.tesla.com/blog/company-update) is a good start (versus doing nothing or worse yet, denying there’s a problem), but I really hope he’s able to find a strong COO candidate like he has in Gwynne Shotwell, his President and COO at SpaceX. (*ahem* Elon, call me.)
5) The future of Tesla is uncertain. Being a first-mover (technically he didn’t create the first electric car, but its the first mass market one with any real traction) means being a target. “Pioneers get all the arrows”, the saying goes. Maybe Tesla goes out of buisness and its assets liquidated. Maybe it’s acquired by Apple, Google, Amazon, or Ford. But he had the foresight to open source Tesla’s patents so that if the ship did sink, at least others could continue to pick up and run with the ball to transition to world to electric vehicles. And do so they have: Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, etc. have all announced all-electric cars coming, including some being so bold as to announce plans to eliminate gasoline vehicles by certain dates. None of that would have been accelerated without Tesla. But all of this is happening at the same time that the mass market cars (Model 3s) are being delivered, and their revenue backlog is converting to cash. From his letter to Tesla employees: “We are about to have the most amazing quarter in our history, building and delivering more than twice as many cars as we did last quarter. For a while, there will be a lot of fuss and noise in the media. Just ignore them. Results are what matter and we are creating the most mind-blowing growth in the history of the automotive industry. Even the Ford Model T, which held the world record for the fastest growing car in history, didn’t grow as fast in sales or production as the Model 3.” Tesla is on some shaky ground for sure, but its also at the exact nexus of many long-term plans finally starting to bear fruit at scale, and I’m sure he’s doing everything he can to de-risk and insulate it, from other car companies, oil companies, government regulators, Wall Street analysts, short sellers, Twitter trolls, frivolous lawsuits, etc. which feeds back into his exhaustion loop.
At the end of the day, this podcast is a gift because it exposes many more people who were lured in under the premise of “watch Ironman smoke a joint” and to those willing to listen, observe one of the most fearless, smartest, autodidact polymaths on Earth walk you through some of the biggest challenges we have ahead of us, and how he and others have solved some of them, insights into how to potentially solve the others with some radical ideas born of science and enginering, and get a taste of how awesome the future will be if we put our heads and hearts together.
But in order to truly become our best selves who can have the most impact, we also have to invest in some serious self-care, downtime, self-reflection to find ways to rapidly restore ourselves on a regular basis or we will continue to make stupid, short-sighted mistakes and/or lack the energy and focus that jeopardize that potential future from becoming a reality.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m a proud Telsa owner, and am long on TSLA stock.
