There’s no shortage of advice on how to improve productivity through meditation, journaling or elaborate morning routines on the internet, but the most productive man of our generation does things a little differently.
Eric Jorgenson, author of The Book of Elon, made a striking observation in a recent interview: the world’s most productive person follows none of the habits that productivity culture swears by.
“I think it’s so funny that the most productive person on earth does zero of the meditation, journaling, morning routine,” Jorgenson said.
What does Musk do instead? According to Jorgenson, the answer is almost comically blunt: he wakes up, picks up his phone, and goes to war. Every single day.
“He wakes up and picks up his phone and goes to war — like every day. That’s his routine. He goes to war.”
Jorgenson was responding to a point raised by the interviewer, who noted Musk’s own framing of his mental approach: “My way of dealing with mental problems is to make sure you really care about what you’re doing and take the pain.”
It’s a philosophy that is the polar opposite of the hustle-culture self-care playbook. No breathing exercises, no gratitude journaling, no carefully curated morning block. Just mission, urgency, and the willingness to absorb discomfort.
This lines up with everything else we know about how Musk actually operates. He has spoken about working 120 hours a week, describing his schedule as: “I go to sleep, I wake up, I work, go to sleep, wake up, work — do that seven days a week.” During Tesla’s notorious production hell, he slept under his desk on the factory floor for days at a stretch. More recently, David Sacks recalled visiting Musk and leaving at midnight — with Musk still going strong.
The implication for anyone trying to decode Musk’s productivity is significant. The self-help industry has long sold the idea that peak performance is a product of optimised inputs — the right sleep schedule, the right mindset ritual, the right morning. Musk’s example suggests something more uncomfortable: that at a certain level of obsession with your work, the question of “routine” becomes almost irrelevant. The mission is the routine.
That said, Musk isn’t entirely without method. He sleeps a disciplined six hours, having tested shorter durations and found they reduced cognitive performance. He delegates almost everything that isn’t a critical bottleneck. And he has strict rules around meetings designed to protect working time. The system exists — it just doesn’t look like anyone else’s.
Jorgenson’s observation cuts through a lot of noise. The most productive person alive doesn’t start his day with mindfulness. He starts it with a phone and a fight.