Elon Musk’s Remarkable Daily Routine Fueling Relentless Innovation
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Elon’s Innovation Secret: No “Musking” Around 

Love him or hate him, you have to admit—Elon doesn’t muck around.

In 2001, Elon flew to Russia because he wanted to buy a rocket for a Mars experiment.

The Russians quoted him 10x more than he expected. Instead of wasting time bargaining, Elon engineered plans for SpaceX on the flight home.

Another day, another year, Elon was stuck in LA traffic and was pissed. He didn’t complain—instead he tweeted about building tunnels.

Within weeks, The Boring Company was digging test tunnels under the city.

Then when Musk bought Twitter…

…His CTO told him mid-flight millions of dollars were being wasted on servers it didn’t need.

So what did he do?

• He instantly rerouted his private jet.
• Landed near the data center.
• And personally shut those servers down.

This is how Elon operates every-single-day:

And the numbers back it up.

From his net worth to the companies he owns, explore Elon’s feats:

Morning Routine

Here’s Elon’s short but purposeful morning routine.

Immediate Mental Shift

• Check messages. Within seconds of waking, Musk switches from rest to relentlessness. From here, every 5 minutes matters. Elon scans his inboxes, DMs, and pings (on his iPhone) for urgent matters.

• Morning shower ritual. The most important mental mind shift for Elon is his morning shower ritual. The hot water hitting his skin triggers a neurochemical reset, giving him a surge of clarity and focus. He often says his best ideas and problem-solving breakthroughs happen in the shower.
• Finish replying to any urgent issues. With his post-shower clarity, Elon can now finish off replying to the urgent matters he saw earlier, ensuring his slate is cleared so he can dive into deep work without distractions.
• Eat brekky with family. Elon isn’t big on eating breakfast, but he is big on spending 20 minutes each morning with his growing family. More often than not, he grabs a coffee to go, but if he does eat, it’s an omelet with the works.

Daytime Routine

Elon’s daytime routine starts early—he doesn’t muck around—here’s what he does.

First Meeting

• Airport commute. Today, Elon is flying from Austin, Texas—Tesla’s HQ and his home base—to Hawthorne, California, where SpaceX HQ is located. He’s heading there for hands-on engineering & operations meetings. A driver takes him to his private jet in a Tesla Model S Plaid. While the car has full self-driving capabilities, Elon prefers to be driven today.

• Tesla executive meeting. On the drive, Musk joins Tesla’s daily executive meeting via video call—either from his MacBook or iPhone. In this meeting, Tesla’s top brass align on quarterly priorities to ensure maximum efficiency.

Deep Work

• Flying private for plug-and-play productivity. Musk frequently flies between Tesla HQ in Texas and SpaceX HQ in California, often more than once a week. These flights provide a rare, distraction-free window for intense, high-focus work at 40,000 feet.

• 2 hours and 30 minutes of pure focus. Despite claims he jumps between tasks every 5 minutes, Musk insists this is pure fiction—saying he thrives on deep, extended focus sessions to tackle high-impact work. He often blocks out the entire flight and isolates himself in the office section of his jet (with a few diet cokes) to work on critical budgeting, strategy, and engineering reviews.

• First principles thinking. Musk breaks problems down to their most basic truths to strip away any-and-all assumptions. From there better solutions take shape. For example, when SpaceX engineers designed a new component that was too heavy and expensive, Musk challenged them to start from the raw materials. By rethinking the design from the ground up, they made it lighter, cheaper, and more efficient.
• Starlink For Aviation. None of this would be possible without Starlink For Aviation, which keeps him connected with high-speed internet no matter where he flies. Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX and uses 6,000 low-Earth orbit satellites to provide internet speeds up to 350 Mbps—fast enough for video calls, gaming and streaming.

Innovation Huddles 

• SpaceX mission control assembly. Today, Elon’s main reason for flying to SpaceX HQ is to give an all-hands presentation, laying out the game plan for SpaceX.  What’s working, what’s not, and how the team is tracking toward the next big launch. It’s about keeping everyone laser-focused on getting to Mars—no fluff. Musk likes to “rally the troops” every quarter to keep the momentum high.
• SpaceX engineer’s war room. Elon loves digging into complex engineering problems. These meetings are intense because he’ll challenge every assumption and make the engineers defend their solutions. It’s all about figuring out how to do the impossible, faster.
• SpaceX launch pad briefing. Next up, it’s quick updates on upcoming launches. If there’s a bottleneck, this is when it gets called out and solved.
• SpaceX ops command sync. The operations and business side of SpaceX also need Elon’s attention. He meets with managers and execs to figure out how to make things more efficient. If a process is slowing down progress, it gets cut or fixed.
• Tesla torque talk. Even when he’s at SpaceX HQ, Elon’s still running Tesla et al. His last official meeting of the morning session is a video call with Tesla leaderships to talk products, production lines, and roadblocks. If there’s a problem it gets solved on the spot.

Working Lunch 

• Turkey wrap, pizza, burger. Elon isn’t big on long, drawn-out meals. He likes to eat while doing something productive—whether it’s grabbing a slice of pineapple and anchovy pizza on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast or downing a turkey wrap while checking emails. For Elon, food is just fuel, and it’s all about keeping things efficient.
• Emails. Elon reads 1,000 emails per day—he’s constantly checking his pings for anything urgent. During this working lunch, he takes the time to reply to approvals, unblock projects, and address anything critical.
• SpaceX executive command briefing. SpaceX leadership will often meet for a high-stakes discussion on strategy, timelines, and critical issues.

Deep Work Session #2

• Office hours. In his final hour before flying back to Texas, Musk holds open office hours to tackle problems with anyone who needs input. It’s a chance for engineers, managers, or anyone on the team to bring issues directly to him. In fact, it was during one of these office hours that the idea for The Boring Company flamethrower first came up—a classic example of Musk’s spontaneous, problem-solving mindset.
• Commute. Now’s the time Elon is driven to the airport—it’s the perfect window of time for him to dial into a Tesla manufacturing meeting.
• Fly back to Texas (+2 hour time change). Elon’s 2.5-hour flight can be a mix of rest and productivity—depending on how he’s feeling. He’ll either take the time to recharge or dive into another deep work session. The 2-hour time change means he lands back in Texas by 6:00 PM local time, almost ready to shift gears into his evening routine.

Evening Routine

Family Dinner

• Biggest meals of the day.

Final Approach Meetings

• Final SpaceX briefing.
• Talk with global customers.

Deep Work Session #3

• Home office.

Wind Down Routine

• Gaming session.
• X.com session.
• Read fiction.
• Sleep.