Speaker A
You, uh, like I mentioned with SpaceX, you give a lot of people hope, and a lot of people look up to you. Millions of people look up to you. Uh, if we think about young people in high school, maybe in college,
Elon Musk shares advice for young people on being useful, self-education, and adopting a growth mindset to make a positive impact in life and career.
Key Takeaways
- Aim to be useful by contributing positively to society.
- Broaden your knowledge through diverse reading and exploration.
- Find work that aligns with both your skills and passions.
- Avoid zero-sum thinking; focus on creating and growing value.
- Leadership is most effective when it arises from genuine usefulness, not ambition.
Summary
- Elon Musk emphasizes the importance of living a useful life by contributing more than you consume.
- He advises young people to develop a broad general knowledge through extensive reading and exploration.
- Musk suggests finding an intersection between your talents, interests, and where you can have a positive impact.
- He highlights the value of self-education, hands-on experience, and joining passionate teams early.
- Musk warns against a zero-sum mindset and encourages a growth mindset focused on expanding opportunities.
- He stresses that leadership is often best when it is not sought for its own sake but emerges naturally.
- Reading broadly, including encyclopedias, helps discover new interests and understand the knowledge landscape.
- Musk respects honest work that adds value and promotes a non-competitive, collaborative approach.
- He points out that celebrating others and their ideas can grow resources and opportunities for all.
- Musk references the importance of excitement and collaboration in fields like AI and academia to increase funding and progress.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Importance of Being Useful
- 00:27Living a Useful Life and Leadership
- 01:41Education, Self-Study, and Hands-On Experience
- 02:14Reading Broadly and Developing General Knowledge
- 03:30Finding Your Talents, Interests, and Positive Impact
- 04:30Respect for Honest Work and Growth Mindset
- 05:38Dangers of Zero-Sum Mindset and Benefits of Collaboration
- 07:24Celebrating Others to Grow Opportunities and Resources
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Um, what advice would you give to them about if they want to try to do something big in this world? They want to really have a big positive impact. What advice would you give them about their career, maybe
Speaker A
About life in general? Try to be useful. Um, you do things that are useful to your fellow human beings, to the world. It's very hard to be useful. Um, very hard. Um, you know, are you contributing more than you
Speaker A
Consume? You know, like, uh, like can you try to have a positive net contribution to society? Um, I think that's the thing to aim for. You know, not to try to be sort of a leader for the sake of being a leader or
Speaker A
Whatever. Um, a lot of times people who, if a lot of times the people you want as leaders are the people who don't want to be leaders. So, um, if you live a useful life, that is a good life,
Speaker A
A life worth having lived. Um, you know, and I, like I said, I would, I would encourage people to, I use the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life. They are the best tools. When you think about
Speaker A
Education and self-education, what do you recommend? So there's the university, there is self-study, there is, uh, hands-on sort of finding a company or a place or a set of people that do the thing you're passionate about and joining them as early as
Speaker A
Possible. Um, there's, uh, taking a road trip across Europe for a few years and writing some poetry, which, uh, which trajectory do you suggest in terms of learning about how you can become useful, as you mentioned, how you
Speaker A
Can have the most positive impact? What I encourage people to do is read a lot of books. Just read, like, basically try to ingest as much information as you can, uh, and try to also just develop a good general knowledge.
Speaker A
Um, so, so you at least have, like, a rough lay of the land of the knowledge landscape. Um, like try to learn a little about a lot of things, um, because you might not know what you're really interested in. How would you
Speaker A
Know what you're really interested in if you at least aren't doing peripheral exploration and broad exploration of the knowledge landscape? Um, and you talk to people from different walks of life and different, uh, industries and professions and skills
Speaker A
And occupations. Like, just try, you know, learn as much as possible. Man's Search for Meaning isn't the whole thing. A search for meaning is, yeah, what's the meaning of life and all, you know, but just generally, like I
Speaker A
Said, I would encourage people to read broadly, um, in many different subject areas, um, and, and, and then try to find something where there's an overlap of your talents and, and what you're interested in. So people may be good at something, but
Speaker A
Although they may have skill at a particular thing, they don't like doing it. Um, so you want to try to find a thing where you have your—that's a good, a good, uh, combination of your, of the things
Speaker A
That you're inherently good at, but you also like doing. Um, and, um, and reading is a super fast shortcut to figure out which, where you both are good at it, you like doing it, and it will actually have
Speaker A
Positive impact. But you got to learn about things somehow. So reading a broad range, it's just a really—read it, you know. More important was that kid, I, I read through the encyclopedia, uh, so that's pretty helpful. Um,
Speaker A
And, uh, also things I didn't even know existed a lot. So obviously it's like as broad as it gets. It's like creators were digestible, I think, uh, you know, whatever, 40 years ago. Um, so, um, you know, maybe read through the, the
Speaker A
Condensed version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I'd recommend that. Um, you can always, like, skip subjects though. You read a few paragraphs and you know you're not interested, just jump to the next one. That's a read encyclopedia skim through it.
Speaker A
Um, and, um, but I, you know, I put a lot of stock in, certainly have a lot of respect for someone who puts in an honest day's work, uh, to do useful things, and, and just generally to have, like, not
Speaker A
A zero-sum mindset, um, or, or like have, have more of a grow-the-pie mindset. Like, if you sort of say, like, when, when we see people like have some, including some very smart people, kind of taking an attitude of, like,
Speaker A
Doing things that seem like morally questionable, it's often because they have at a base sort of axiomatic level a zero-sum mindset. Um, and, and they, without realizing it, they don't realize they have a zero-sum mindset or at least that they don't
Speaker A
Realize it consciously. Um, and so if you have a zero-sum mindset, then the only way to get ahead is by taking things from others. If it's like, if, if the, if the pie is fixed, then the only way to have more pie
Speaker A
Is to take someone else's pie. But, but this is false. Like, obviously the pie has grown dramatically over time, the economic pie. So the real, in reality, you can have that. So overuse this analogy: if you have a
Speaker A
Lot of—there's a lot of pie, yeah, it's not fixed. Um, uh, so you really want to make sure you don't, you're not operating, um, without realizing it from a zero-sum mindset where the only way to get
Speaker A
Ahead is to take things from others. Then that's going to result in you trying to take things from others, which is not, not good. It's much better to work on, uh, uh, adding to the economic pie, you know. So
Speaker A
Quick, creating, like I said, creating more than you consume, uh, doing more than you, yeah. Um, so that, that's a big deal. Um, I think there's like, you know, fair number of people in finance that, uh, do have a bit of a
Speaker A
Zero-sum mindset. I mean, it's all walks of life. I've seen that. One of the, one of the reasons, uh, Rogan inspires me is he celebrates all—there's a lot, there's not, not creating a constant competition. Like, if there's a scarcity of resources, what
Speaker A
Happens when you celebrate others and you promote others, the ideas of others? It, it, uh, it actually grows that pie. I mean, it, every, like the, uh, the resource, the resources become less scarce, and that, that applies in a lot of kinds of
Speaker A
Domains. It applies in academia where a lot of people are very, uh, see some funding for academic research is zero-sum, and it is not. If you celebrate each other, if you make, if you get everybody to be excited about AI, about
Speaker A
Physics, about mathematics, I think there'll be more and more funding, and I think everybody wins. Yeah, that applies, I think, broadly. Uh, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Topics:Elon Muskadvice for young peopleself-educationgrowth mindsetusefulnesspositive impactzero-sum mindsetreading broadlycareer adviceLex Fridman Podcast
