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To end this part, I'll remind you, it is a poor workman who blames his tools - the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the best answer he can.' And I suggest that by altering the problem, by looking at the thing differently, you can make a great deal of difference in your final productivity because you can either do it in such a fashion that people can indeed build on what you've done, or you can do it in such a fashion that the next person has to essentially duplicate again what you've done. It isn't just a matter of the job, it's the way you write the report, the way you write the paper, the whole attitude. It's just as easy to do a broad, general job as one very special case. And it's much more satisfying and rewarding!

When you're a startup, having a really focused effort, high velocity, moving quickly, getting things out, and learning often is the way to go. We're wrong a lot, all the time, but if you can understand how customers react to it, you can improve and more accurately point the direction and vector of your product. You get a lot further in the right direction a lot faster if you take these super large bets released in multi-month to multi-year cycles.We said, you know what, we are, at times, going to have many different ways of solving the problems. It's going to create some clutter, and we think that's a good thing. We need antibodies and internal mechanisms doing occasional QA to not stop the production and creation of new things, but to be cleaning and sweeping the streets.

[What is the role of middle managers in decision-making?] The key to success is the middle manager, who not only is a link in the chain of command but also can see to it that the holders of the two types of power mesh smoothly.

With little prompting, Musk would start expounding on his desire to do something meaningful with his life—something lasting. His next move had to be either in solar or in space. “He said, ‘The logical thing to happen next is solar, but I can’t figure out how to make any money out of it ’”

Personally, if I can have an impact, it’s the most valuable thing, most rewarding thing I can do, and I’m always curious to learn about new technologies. I’m a techie nerd at heart.

At its best, an organization - your team - bespeaks values and a way of doing things that emanate from a source; that source is you - the leader.

And ultimately, if your product roadmap doesn't actually hit the goals of the company, then I'm accountable because I've created a system by which I've aligned with each team on why the roadmap is going to hit the goals. And so you essentially need to point back to the leader in that regard.

It doesn’t matter how fast you move if it’s in a worthless direction. Picking the right thing to work on is the most important element of productivity and usually almost ignored.

When I started, I didn't think about the next 5 or 10 years. I was just trying to survive as a business. It was simple: we focused on a three-month view, built what we needed in that period, and then moved on to the next three months. We never had long-term planning. We were focused on surviving and building the features and products that people wanted, driven by short-term goals rather than long-term ones.

Doing as much as you can every day is a form of life extension.