Stay Curious, Read Widely: Life Advice from Elon Musk

Question:

My name is, uh, Aaron Armstrong. Yes, sir, my name is, uh, Aaron Armstrong. Um, it's not every day that you get to be in the presence of somebody that's accumulated so much wealth and success. So, I just wanted to take this opportunity to ask for any wisdoms or secrets that you may have to offer about this game of life that we're all trying to play.

Answer:

Sure, um, I mean, I try to say everything that I know. Although admittedly, sometimes I'm, you know, like I posted on X—I guess, should I ask the AI to look through all of my X posts and pick out the ones that are really good? Because I try to say any, you know, good ideas that I have. Um, I try to post them. Yeah, I think generally it's good to always be curious. And to, you know, to read widely. Like, read a lot of interesting books, especially history. I find history really interesting. Um, and I find, like, biographies and autobiographies to be also very interesting. You know, I think it's good to read especially autobiographies, where somebody's done something incredible and they wrote the book themselves, or mostly themselves. That'll give you a lot of ideas. Um, and something that I do is, I'll get audiobooks. Because I've got, like, so much going on in my mind. When I—it's kind of hard to go to sleep because it's like having a computer browser with, like, 100 tabs open. That's by the end of the day—I got, like, 100 tabs open. It's like, how do I close this browser? You know, that's my brain. That's my brain. So then I'll listen to an audiobook, and I'll put it on a timer, and it's like 15 minutes. It's like being read a bedtime story by your phone. So, podcasts and audiobooks, especially at bedtime, I find are great.