A person needs to work 80-100 hours per week to change the world.
Elon Musk tweet
‘Working 9 to 5 is For Losers’ was the title of a recent New York Times article.[i] VUCANs have picked up this mantra from Elon Musk, today’s Thomas Edison. Elon in the U.S. is the hero of a generation of ‘crushers’, entrepreneurial startup workers. Same for Jack Ma in China.
Elon Musk serves as CEO for four companies, including Tesla, Space X, and Boring. You can see interesting Muskian work developments in Working It. One Working It shifting paradigm from Elon Musk is to pull all-nighters in his factories, where talk of 120 hour work weeks is a badge of honor. For example, his Tesla employees worked 100 hours per week at times as they increased production of the company’s Tesla Model 3 sedan.[ii]
Why is Elon Musk a hero to super achievers? He’s a crusher. He’s a dreamer. He’s a doer. He’s a maker. He’s launching rockets. He’s built a new auto company called Tesla. Is that all? He wants to colonize Mars.
The downside is there’s a backlash to super achievement. Elon Musk cautions the pain tied to working those long hours ‘increases exponentially’. Pre COVID, VUCANs wrote about work-life balance because additional hours lead to crazy work, anxiety, pain, and even death. Now, it’s finding a job.
The distance between risk taking dreamers, doers, makers, creatives, and founders and risk-averse VUCANs has become evenmore pronounced. Each is forming work and political tribes that resent each other.
Work discussions are visceral. In the Future of Work, you’ll hear talk of the breakup of tech, professional unions, $15 minimum wage, 30 hour work weeks, universal basic income (UBI), socialism, resistance, social justice, and end of privilege. This is happening world-wide.
Work Lesson Earned: So, he’s a god to many who believe that dreams are possible and doable even if they mean going to the ends of earth, the moon, and even Mars. Musk epitomizes manifest space destiny for humankind.
[i] ‘Working 9 to 5 is For Losers, New York Times’, August 31, 2018.
[ii] LinkedIn, November 28, 2018.