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How Elon Musk Learns Faster And Better
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Than Everyone Else

Michael Simmons Follow
Dec 7 · 7 min read

Photo Credit: Heisenberg Media

How is it even possible that Elon Musk could build four

multibillion companies by his mid-40s — in four separate elds
(software, energy, transportation, and aerospace)?

To explain Musk’s success, others have pointed to his heroic work ethic
(he regularly works 85-hour weeks), his ability to set reality-distorting
visions for the future, and his incredible resilience.
But all of these felt unsatisfactory to me. Plenty of people have these
traits. I wanted to know what he did di erently.

As I kept reading dozens of articles, videos, and books about Musk, I

noticed a huge piece of the puzzle was missing. Conventional wisdom
says that in order to become world-class, we should only focus on one
eld. Musk breaks that rule. His expertise ranges from rocket science,
engineering, construction, tunneling, physics, and arti cial intelligence
to solar power and energy.

In a previous article, I call people like Elon Musk modern polymaths.

Modern polymaths:

• Follow the 5-hour rule and put at least 5 hours per week into
learning.

• Study widely in many di erent elds.

• Understand deeper principles and mental models that connect

those elds.

• Apply those mental models to their core specialty.

Based on my review of Musk’s life and the academic literature

related to learning and expertise, I’m convinced that we should
ALL learn across multiple elds in order to increase our odds of
breakthrough success.

Amazingly, the most comprehensive study of the most signi cant

scientists in all of history uncover that 15 of the 20 were polymaths.
Furthermore, the founders of the ve largest companies in the world —
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Bu ett, Larry Page, and Je Bezos — all
polymaths (who also follow the 5-hour rule).

The Jack Of All Trade Myth

“Grow up. Focus on just one eld.”

“Jack of all trades. Master of none.”

 
The implicit assumption is that if you study in multiple areas, you’ll
only learn at a surface level, never gain mastery.
The success of modern polymaths throughout time shows that this is
wrong. Learning across multiple elds provides several unappreciated
and signi cant advantages:

1. Creating an atypical combination of two or more skills that you’re

merely competent can lead to a world-class skill set.

2. Gives you an information advantage(and therefore an innovation

advantage) because most people focus on just one eld.

3. It future-proofs Your career.

4. It helps you stand out and compete in the global economy.

For example, if you’re in the tech industry and everyone else is just
reading tech publications, but you also know a lot about biology, you
have the ability to come up with ideas that almost no one else could.
Vice-versa. If you’re in biology, but you you also understand arti cial
intelligence, you have an information advantage over everyone else
who stays siloed.

Despite this basic insight, few people actually learn beyond their
industry.

Each new eld we learn that is unfamiliar to others in our eld gives us
the ability to make combinations that they can’t. This is the modern
polymath advantage.

One fascinating study echoes this insight. It examined how the top 59
opera composers of the 20th century mastered their craft. Counter to
the conventional narrative that success of top performers can solely be
explained by deliberate practice and specialization, the researcher
Dean Keith Simonton found the exact opposite: “The compositions of
the most successful operatic composers tended to represent a mix of
genres…composers were able to avoid the in exibility of too much
expertise(overtraining) by cross-training,”summarizes UPENN
researcher Scott Barry Kaufman in a Scienti c American article.

Musk’s “learning transfer” superpower

Starting from his early teenage years, Musk would read through two
books per day in various disciplines according to his brother, Kimbal
Musk. To put that context, if you read one book a month, Musk would
read 60 times as many books as you.

At rst, Musk’s reading spanned science ction, philosophy, religion,

programming, and biographies of scientists, engineers, and
entrepreneurs.As he got older, his reading and career interests spread
to physics, engineering, product design, business, technology, and
energy. This thirst for knowledge allowed him to get exposed to a
variety of subjects he had never necessarily learned about in school.

Elon Musk is also good at a very speci c type of learning that most
others aren’t even aware of — learning transfer.

Learning transfer is taking what we learn in one context and applying it

to another. It can be taking a kernel of what we learn in school or in a
book and applying it to the “real world.” It can also be taking what we
learn in one industry and applying it to another.

This is where Musk shines. Several of his interviews show that he has a
unique two-step process for fostering learning transfer.

First, he deconstructs knowledge into

fundamental principles and mental models
Musk’s answer on a Reddit AMA describes how he does that:

It is important to view knowledge as sort of a

semantic tree — make sure you understand the
fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big
branches, before you get into the leaves/details or
there is nothing for them to hang onto.

The experience of other world-class entrepreneurs suggests that they

deconstruct their knowledge into mental models as well. Self-made
billionaire and Warren Bu ett’s long-term business partner, Charlie
Munger goes so far as to say:

“Developing the habit of mastering the multiple models which

underlie reality is the best thing you can do. “
Self-made billionaire Ray Dalio echoes this:

“Those who understand more of them and understand them well

[principles / mental models] know how to interact with the world more
e ectively than those who know fewer of them or know them less well.
“

Research suggests that turning your knowledge into deeper, abstract

mental models facilitates learning transfer. Research also suggests that
one technique is particularly powerful for helping people intuit
underlying mental models. This technique is called, “contrasting cases.”

Here’s how the deconstruction process works: Let’s say you want to
deconstruct the letter “A” and understand the deeper principle of what
makes an “A” an A. Let’s further say that you have two approaches you
could use to do this:

Which approach do you think would work better?

The answer is Approach #1!

Each di erent A in Approach #1 gives more insight into what stays the
same and what di ers between each A. On the other hand, each A in
Approach #2 gives us no insight.

By looking at lots of diverse cases when we learn anything, we begin to

intuit what is essential and even craft our own unique combinations.

What does this mean in our day-to-day life? When we’re jumping into a
new eld, we shouldn’t just take one approach or best practice. We
should explore lots of di erent approaches, deconstruct each one, and
then compare and contrast them. This will help us uncover underlying
principles.
Next, he reconstructs the fundamental
principles in new elds
Step two of Musk’s learning transfer process involves reconstructing the
foundational principles he’s learned in arti cial intelligence,
technology, physics, and engineering into separate elds:

• In aerospace in order to create SpaceX.

• In automotive in order to create Tesla with self-driving features.

• In trains in order to envision the Hyperloop.

• In aviation in order to envision electric aircraft that take o and

land vertically.

• In technology in order to envision a neural lace that interfaces

your brain.

• In technology in order to help build PayPal.

• In technology in order to co-found OpenAI, a non-pro t that limits

the probability of negative arti cial intelligence futures.

• In physics in order to build The Boring Company.

Keith Holyoak, a UCLA professor of psychology and one of the world’s

leading thinkers on analogical reasoning, recommends people ask
themselves the following two questions in order to hone their skills:

1. What does this remind me o ?

2. Why does it remind me of it?

By constantly looking at objects in your environment and material you

read and asking yourself these two questions, you build the muscles in
your brain that help you make connections across traditional
boundaries.

Bottom line: It’s not magic. It’s just the

right learning process
Now, we can begin to understand how Musk has become a world-class
modern polymath:

• He spent many years reading 60 times as much as an avid reader.

• He read widely across di erent disciplines.

• He constantly applied what he learned by deconstructing ideas

into their fundamental principles and reconstructing them in new
ways.

At the deepest level, what we can learn from Elon Musk’s story is that
we shouldn’t accept the dogma that specialization is the best or only
path toward career success and impact. Legendary expert-generalist
Buckminster Fuller summarizes a shift in thinking we should all
consider. He shared it decades ago, but it’s just as relevant today:

“We are in an age that assumes that the narrowing trends of specialization
to be logical, natural, and desirable… In the meantime, humanity has
been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred
feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also
resulted in the individual’s leaving responsibility for thinking and social
action to others.Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as
international and ideological discord, which in turn leads to war.”

At the most practical level, what we can learn from Elon Musk is the
modern polymath formula:

• Put in the time (at least ve hours per week)

• Learn the core mental models across elds (here’s my list).

• Relate those concepts back to our life and the world.

• Ferociously apply what you learn.

As we build up a reservoir of “ rst principles” / mental models and

associate them with di erent elds, we suddenly gain the superpower
of being able to go into a new eld we’ve never learned before, and
quickly make unique contributions. It is because of this that I co-
founded the Mental Model Of The Month Club.
Understanding Elon’s learning superpowers helps us gain some insight
into how he could go into an industry that has been around for more
than 100 years and change the whole basis of how the eld competes.

Elon Musk is one of a kind, but his abilities aren’t magical.