Elon Musk: Advice for Young People Lex Fridman Podcast
Watch for interview ( first 4.24 min ONLY)
Transcript
Interviewer:
“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. If we think about young people in high school, maybe in college, what advice would you give to them if they want to try to do something big in this world, if they want to have a big positive impact? What advice would you give them about their career, maybe about life in general?”
Speaker (Elon Musk):
“Try to be useful. Do things that are useful to your fellow human beings, to the world. It’s very hard to be useful. You know, are you contributing more than you consume? Like, can you try to have a positive net contribution to society? I think that’s the thing to aim for, you know. Not to try to be a leader for the sake of being a leader or whatever. A lot of times the people you want as leaders are the people who don’t want to be leaders. So, if you live a useful life, that is a good life, a life worth having lived.”
Interviewer:
“And like you said, I would encourage people to use the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life. They are the best tools. When you think about education and self-education, what do you recommend? There’s university, there’s self-study, there’s hands-on experience, finding a company or a set of people who do what you’re passionate about and joining them as early as possible. Or, there’s taking a road trip across Europe for a few years and writing some poetry. Which trajectory do you suggest?”
Speaker (Elon Musk):
“In terms of learning about how you can become useful, and how you can have the most positive impact, I would encourage people to read a lot of books. Just read. Basically, try to ingest as much information as you can, and try to develop a good general knowledge. So you at least have a rough map of the knowledge landscape. Like, try to learn a little about a lot of things, because you might not know what you’re really interested in. How would you know what you’re really interested in if you haven’t done some peripheral exploration of the knowledge landscape?”
Speaker (Elon Musk):
“And talk to people from different walks of life, different industries, professions, skills, and occupations. Just try to learn as much as possible.”
Interviewer:
“Man’s search for meaning — isn’t the whole thing a search for meaning? What’s the meaning of life?”
Speaker (Elon Musk):
“Yeah, it’s a search for meaning. What’s the meaning of life? I would encourage people to read broadly in many different subject areas. And then try to find something where there’s an overlap of your talents and what you’re interested in.”
Speaker (Elon Musk):
“People may be good at something, but they don’t like doing it. So, you want to try to find something that’s a good combination of the things that you’re inherently good at, but also like doing. Reading is a super fast shortcut to figure out where you’re both good at something, you like doing it, and it will actually have a positive impact.“
Speaker (Elon Musk):
“But you’ve got to learn about things somehow. So reading a broad range of topics is really helpful. You know, when I was a kid, I read through the encyclopedia, and that was pretty helpful.”