Elon Musk announced that he was going to write a book about Tesla and SpaceX, and I am here for it. Both companies have set historical records and will be talked about well after we are all dead and gone. Elon’s legacies — yes, plural — will be something that future generations will build upon on both Earth and Mars.
I think that in his book Elon will talk about the lessons he’s learned while building Tesla and SpaceX and some of these will include not just the challenges, but also his thought processes as he tackled the challenges.
I’ve been following Elon Musk for almost 3 years now and I have seen in my own personal life how his way of thinking affects those around him — close and distant. What I mean is that it’s contagious. Interacting with Elon Musk on Twitter has helped me quite a bit over the last three years and I’ve noticed that others have had revolutionary changes in their own personal lives after interacting with him, being encouraged by him, and even from simply observing the way he does things. It’s really inspiring.
Writing a book, especially one that is written in the autobiographical sense, which is what this one will be written from, is very intimate. It requires organizing your thoughts, facing feelings, and even reliving those feelings. It requires the art of not just sharing those feelings with your audience, but a deep connection that is felt on both ends. You want your audience to feel how you feel and to understand why you think the way you do. The scariest part, though, is making yourself vulnerable to your audience. Sharing your thoughts, fears, and joy, which all require you to open up.
I don’t see Elon as a person who would open up like this normally, but I definitely encourage him to do so, because he is someone we all can learn from — and many generations from now he will be looked upon as a hero of our times, someone who made revolutionary changes in extraordinary ways while facing some of the most intense challenges and oppositions from his own heroes and his critics.
Elon’s book will be inspiring and a bold ray of light for those of us who will get to read it when it is written.