I'd imagine he has an impressively comprehensive team around him ensuring he doesn't need to focus on anything other than his work.

That said, working over 14 hours per day 7 days a week is implausible to me. Maybe in short bursts but I doubt he does that for any stretch of time.

The Elon Musk PR machine & cult of public enthusiasm is a massive business asset. When you're in the business of selling dreams to investors and employees pushing themselves to the limit this type of 'fact' is going to get thrown around.

'Work' can include things like travel and lunches. Both of which can be downtime but are classed as 'work'.

Overall its hard to believe considering he also has Space x and other investments and im suresomeone is streching the truth. But I dont doubt the guy lives and breaths his work.

Bill Gates was reputed to work that much as well, and I don't think anyone disputed it either.

self-reported and therefore not reliable.

some executives never stop working, even when not on site they consider time spent solving problems in their head or sitting at their computer/tablet/etc as work.

myself I have been around some six to six executives who even at parties talk shop. hell we used to joke that when one went on vacation it only made his emails longer

Yes, I'm sure they do and I would too but that is not the vernacular "working".

The lights in comrade muskovices office never go out. He is watching out for us, as we sleep!

I sometimes wonder, whether such a hyped personality could be completely synthesized. Just a actor and a really good propaganda show. And if all those morons going along for the ride, would learn from that being revealed.

I often start at 7am and go until 10pm. My girlfriend makes me food and brings my caffeine. I have no time for "non work activities"though. I'll be in bed watching Netflix but really working on my laptop. Even when I have to goto the grocery store my mind is always on work. Being a remote employee, the line is blurred. If I'm out and about but all I can do is daydream about a new algorithm, I consider that working.

I mean this without any intention of belittling or suggestion that you should do otherwise, but why? Not that you need justify anything to me, of course.

It's so fundamentally opposite to my experience, and I'm curious about what's driving you to work like this.

In my personaly anecdotal experience, it eventulally leads to burnout, health and relationship problems. After doing two startups and working way too much for way too little, I now strongly believe in a healthy work-life balance. Hell, I’m looking at reducing my worked hours (for less pay) because I now value my non-work free time much much more than I did before.

But.. to each thir own, I suppose.

Yes you have to find balance. It might be 100 hours one week & 10 hours the next. I work just as much as everyone else over time, it just comes in bursts of creativity. Some light bulb goes off & then I can't sleep until I have my idea working.

Ah, bursts of creativity/activity I can understand and do myself. I suppose my point is more that its not sustainable to work such long hours, not that it can’t be done successfully every so often without long term problems :)

I also find that sometimes “my time” looks an awful lot like work in the sense that I might do very similar things (hey, I enjoy programming!), the difference is that one is done on my terms, when and how I want and I do it to relax, have fun or otherwise do something I want, while the other is something I do because I have to.

Because its fun. I can't sleep because I'm excited to code. It interests me more than most other activities.

How did you get "100 hours a week"-excited to code? The only thing I am waiting for is this shit to click, but for the last five years, it hasn't happened. And I dreadfully want it to.

Thanks for sharing. It's cool that you've found something you're so passionate about.

Is it a life you enjoy living? I'm just curious :)

I mean technically if you are available to answer phone calls or emails, I think we should consider you are "working". I mean it is ridiculous to pay you by the hour at that point but if I didn't have to pay you by the hour, that's the criteria I'd use.

I think I read somewhere that somewhere in France or Germany some city or some department/province said you can't require your employees to promptly respond to emails outside of their work hours (I imagine they don't have "at-will" employment).

Do you bill those hours also?

I'm on salary. But I've gotten numerous raises & bonuses. I "front" the work, then ask for raises later. If I don't get the raise, I move onto the next company. Eventually I found a job willing pay more for increased output & stuck with it.

This is why billing by the hour is broken. Too bad we can't have anything better that people will not immediately abuse.

He also flies... :-/

Elon is cool and all, but his fanboys are making the whole thing really ridiculous. Btw, it might even be true, but can we falsify it? Exactly as in religion (to give it in Karl Popper's terms).

A friend who works at Tesla said he has (had?) a bed in his office. So maybe he's counting the hours spent there, too?

I recently analysed a load of my time tracking data.[1] I only managed to get up to 11h37m per day when I'm travelling for work. That includes flights as 'work'.

It does seem pretty unlikely unless he's counting Networking/social type events in the evenings and stuff.

[1] https://www.tinkertailorsoldiersponge.com/toggl

The ability to work uninterrupted is a privilege. First time sink is family, spouses, partners, kids, friends and social obligations. Take 2 hours minimum.

Organizing food and eating - another 2 hours. If cooking add an hour to that so 3 hours for food.

For cleaning and basic home maintenance - minimum 1 hour. Personal hygiene - add an hour so total 2 hours.

Commuting if necessary - 1 hour minimum.

Add 8 hours or let's be harder and take 6 hours for sleep. That's a total of 14 hours that can't be negotiated leaving you with 10 hours for work.

Given the brain will not operate at that stretch you need distraction, so web, tv, books, games, movies - another 2-3 hours. So 7-8 hours seems to the the maximum any human being can work.

If you don't have family and friends and someone takes care of food and maintenance you can get an additional 4 hours. So anything beyond 10-12 hours seems physically impossible, and this is with 6 hours sleep, no family and all responsibilities taken care of.

The vast majority of what you mention is wrong for me, and I'm not remotely of the paygrade of someone like Elon Musk.

If you think Elon Musk spends 2-3 hours per day on eating, then I'm not sure what I can say further.

I doubt food magically appears on your plate? You seem to have left out the 'Organizing food' part of the eating entry above which includes the time required to get the food.

You either have to source food from markets and cook it, have it cooked, eat at a restaurant or order out, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. All this takes time as does time to actually eat the food.

If you have a family multiply the time required. If you can do all the above in less than 3 hours it's worth sharing.

You don't think someone with the net worth of Elon Musk and his focus on productivity doesn't have assistants for that? Really!?

Even still, I source my own food, cook it, and eat it three times a day and don't spend 3hrs/day every day doing so (and those who know me know I cook pretty fancy meals).

Did you read the original comment? It rather explicitly states if you have people taking care of things you get more time. I really don't see the point of your continuous misrepresentation.

The point was about privilege and the average person. Obviously you will have more time if you have people taking care of things for you or are Usain Bolt with food like yourself, but this does not apply to the average person.

If they had the same privilege as Musk they too can work 14 hours a day so it's not noteworthy in any particular way.

Yes, I did read the original comment. 95% of the comment was made up numbers with one sentence thrown in for good measure:

> The ability to work uninterrupted is a privilege.

Yes, it is a privilege, but that doesn't negate that the rest of the post is completely false conjecture by one person.

> That's a total of 14 hours that can't be negotiated

If it can't be negotiated, then why do many people do it, especially ones who are more well off financially?

> 10 hours for work. Given the brain will not operate at that stretch you need distraction, so web, tv, books, games, movies - another 2-3 hours. So 7-8 hours seems to the the maximum any human being can work.

I'm not sure why I am even bothering to reply to that, but if you think that's true then honestly we aren't having an intelligent debate and so my time is being wasted.

> So anything beyond 10-12 hours [working] seems physically impossible

Same as above.

Or, you know, eat things that are quick to prepare. If I am at home[1] spend about 40 minutes per week on food shopping and can prepare a simple (perhaps boring) meal in 5 minutes and eat it in 10 or multitask while eating.

[1] When not at home, eg in the office, then I spend a lot more time getting/eating lunch, but its generally to get away from work so I would spend the time away from work anyway.

Very rich people don't need to do any of that. They hire kitchen staff who'll do everything but eat the food.

The original comment is about privilege and the average person. It explicitly states if you have people taking care of things for you, you get more time.

That's why working interrupted is a privilege, as other people take care of necessities for you. Elon musk working 14 hours is not anything special if he has people doing things for him, the average person does not have this privilege and anyone with similar privilege can do the same thing.

Hire a cook.

Trivial if you consider your time to be worth > $1,000 / hour.

In the past I've seen articles claiming Musk works while spending time with his kids, while they are attended by nannies. I doubt he sources his own food.

I still question those numbers, and even more so whether or not he can work effectively for that amount of time, though.

> I still question those numbers, and even more so whether or not he can work effectively for that amount of time, though.

I agree completely with you here, the numbers are obviously padded vs what many normally think is "work". But the reality is that many actually work far more hours per day than they realize if the use a similar definition of "work" as what's used for Musk's number here. How many of us lay in bed thinking about a tough work problem? While quickly snarfing down food sitting at your desk, are you not reading emails or similar? Do you go to networking events and talk business? That's all "work" technically if you're being liberal with the definition (and honestly, it's not unreasonable to call that "work").

I doubt all that time is 100% focus - that number probably includes business lunches, driving to PR gigs (during which he might read something work related), etc.

If you count all that stuff then the average person is probably working more than 8 hours too.

It's not true. Easy as that.

So then how many hours does he spend with SpaceX?

Close to another 100!:

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/elon-musk-goals/

The proportion of time Musk devotes to each company is derived from a description he gave at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June 2017. "The Boring Company is maybe 2 percent of my time, Neuralink 3-5 percent, Open AI another couple percent,” Musk said. The rest is split almost evenly between Tesla and SpaceX, he said, but “slightly more Tesla—it’s like a drama magnet."

Another 80 per week. He just works quite long weeks.

With 168 hours per week that would require some rather advanced magic.

The Boring Company's real goal is to drill a black hole so Musk can work from a time dilation singularity.

Or a company called Wells that produces time machines, like Tesla produces cars and batteries.

his job there is to think, talk and send emails. that's doable 16 hours a day (minus some disruptions) for average person and i don't think Elon is average.