Elon Musk on how to choose what to work on

October 17, 2024

“I don’t think everything needs to change the world. There’s lots of useful things that people do, and I think it should really be like a usefulness optimization.”

For anyone trying to figure out what to work on, Elon suggests asking yourself, “Is what I’m doing as useful as it could be?”

He continues:

“Even if something isn’t changing the world but it’s making people’s lives better, I think that’s great.”

Elon gives the example of an app that makes people’s lives only slightly better - the area under the curve of the usefulness optimization is quite good if it’s affecting a lot of people.

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Elon Musk insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Elon Musk"