Story Brunch
Ever wondered what makes Elon Musk one of the most brilliant minds on the planet today,rather in the history of humanity?
An engineer, a corporate powerhouse, ,an innovator and an industrial designer, all rolled into one is Elon Musk persona.
Musk is founder of revolutionary tech companies in the fields of online payments, space exploration, Artificial Intelligence, and the electric vehicles segment,we all know Tesla.
SpaceX
TESLA
The Boring Company
NeuraLink
Open AI
PayPal
So, what’s inside the brain of the man who is all determined to colonise Mars, what sets him apart not only from the common folks who remain confined to a narrow specialization whole life, but also from most of his corporate peers.
In pursuit of answer, the StoryBrunch team scanned hundreds of articles and tens of interviews to provide readers the ingredients of Musk’s intelligence.
The answer starts with the conventional wisdom :
Get Basics Right !
Musk’s college room mate and his first wife were interviewed to know how Musk managed to be so brilliant ,they had to say that two things make Musk a genius class apart –He is extremely task focused and and the attention to work is intense.
Incredible Focus + Intensity
Focus and intensity can make anyone shine distinct from others,specially in an era where most are consumed by plethora of information pollution, working with half minds and reaching out to smartphone notifications every other minute. With decreasing attention spans and narrowing of processing power, these basic qualities can bring out the genius from anyone.
How to be a Fast Learner like Musk?
As evident from the contextual switching managing multiple tech companies, Elon Musk is a very fast learner.
Elon Musk does a very deep study of his subjects, till he achieves a level of absolute crystal clarity, to say,he can see across theories. Seeing across theories helps him connect various theories and inter-linking of different concepts.
Innate talent combined with lots of raw knowledge amplifies his ability to learn things fast.
Being a voracious reader, Musk keeps adding to his vast base of accumulated knowledge. A large and string base of information helps him in fast processing, leading to super Fluid intelligence.
To understand it simply, he keeps adding building blocks to his crystal clear basics and large stock of information, which aid him in making connections and learn faster. It’s similar to mnemonics/ memorizing technique in which we try to link a new info to a piece of old info that we have,so that we can recall it easily in future.
Let’s see what Elon Musk himself has to say about Learning when asked by a Reddit user in his #AskMeAnything session :
I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.
One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.
~ Elon Musk
Optimism and Problem Solving Attitude
No ordinary optimist can dream about colonizing Mars one day,one has to be a philosopher to dream beyond boundaries of imagination and an Elon Musk to really work on it !
Optimists are problem solvers. The drive to seek solutions pushes them towards learning more and exploring uncharted territories. Elon Musk is a highly ambitious and idiosyncratic optimist.
This is how Panasonic’s CEO Kazuhiro Tsuga describes Musk.
“A genius who defies common sense and can be overly optimistic”
“I believe only geniuses can hold onto big visions, and a genius I know is Elon Musk” ,he also adds.
To conclude,following characteristics can make one achieve similar, if not same level of brilliance in one’s own field of work :
Getting basics of your subject right
Lot of reading- Accumulated intelligence
Interlinking of concepts- Fluid Intelligence
Optimism ,Ambitious
Be a problem solver.
Incredible Focus
Intensity while working
