A friend sent me a link to a post on Quora from Elon Musk’s ex-wife, Justine Musk.
Musk answers a question on Quora “How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Richard Branson?” Her advice is interesting:
Don’t follow a pre-existing path, and don’t look to imitate your role models. There is no “next step”. Extreme success is not like other kinds of success; what has worked for someone else, probably won’t work for you. They are individuals with bold points of view who exploit their very particular set of unique and particular strengths. They are unconventional, and one reason they become the entrepreneurs they become is because they can’t or don’t or won’t fit into the structures and routines of corporate life. They are dyslexic, they are autistic, they have ADD, they are square pegs in round holes, they piss people off, get into arguments, rock the boat, laugh in the face of paperwork. But they transform weaknesses in ways that create added advantage — the strategies I mentioned earlier — and seek partnerships with people who excel in the areas where they have no talent whatsoever.
Extreme success is out of my reach. I’m too old, and I have to balance personal ambitions with family responsibilities. Even in my 20s, I was never willing to do what was necessary for extreme success. Extreme success is a horcrux that tears the soul.
I am, however, in the process of reassessing my time usage and long-term goals, so elements of her post were useful for me. And as a parent of a kid who is neurologically different, her comments about square pegs were especially interesting.
Apt. 11d 
I think what’s key is becoming clear about what success means to you. Being honest about that whether it’s extreme success or not or something in between. Staying strong no matter what the culture/people around you value.
And it’ll shift over time as you move through different life stages/cycles. Right now you have “this” much time. When the boys are in college you’ll have THIS much time.
You’ve probably seen this video making the rounds – it’s about a Mexican fisher and an investment banker. https://vimeo.com/120138244
LikeLike
And of course the ability to ponder next steps is a luxury in itself. Most people need to put food on the table and look after their families. Any self actualization is a bonus.
LikeLike
Dan Simon wrote a blog post about the topic of extreme success some time ago. It’s silly to aim for extreme success, because by definition it requires a highly fortuitous combination of abilities, interests, and circumstances. The world is littered with computer geeks who aren’t Bill Gates, and by people with an obsessive interest in technologies that have never borne fruit, or industries that weren’t deregulated in a way that permitted new operational structures. So strive for extreme success if you wish, and if it happens, enjoy it, but advising others on how to achieve it wastes their time and yours.
In contrast, conventional success if easy to describe and predict. An examination of a particular individual’s characteristics and circumstances can readily generate good advice, although most people probably figure it out on their own.
LikeLike
I’ve always intensely disliked Elon Musk after reading Justine Musk (unfair, I know to dislike him based on that alone, but I didn’t know anything about him before reading her article). I’ve always thought that was one of the drawbacks of extreme success, people on the internet having strong opinions about you.
And, yes, advice on how to be Bill Gates is bad advice; She does say you can’t be Bill Gates by being like, and that’s a take home lesson. But the other is that you need to have the right stuff at the right time and place to achieve that kind of success.
That’s why I can’t take the outside the box neurology seriously. It’s indeed possible that Musk, Gates, Jobs (I had to look Branson up) have atypical brains, and that might be a component in their extreme success, but their lives don’t particular provide a plan for anyone else.
LikeLike
I don’t believe that extreme success needs to tear the soul — there are personalities who acquire it and keep their souls intact. I don’t think Musk is one of them. So far, I think Gates is, and Buffett. I think Bezos, too. Maybe counting their wives is a good stand in for the tears in their souls (though that doesn’t account for the tradition of affairs).
LikeLike
I was just looking up John Wesley’s bio, and he was both incredibly successful as a preacher (thousands would attend his open air sermons and of course he founded Methodism), but at the same time his late-in-life marriage to a widow was a ridiculous disaster.
“The marriage was not happy”indeed, the spouses proved scarcely able to tolerate each other. When Wesley, at a Methodist conference in Bristol, got word that his wife was dangerously ill, he headed back to their London home. Arriving at their apartment at the ungodly hour of one o’clock the following morning, he discovered that her fever had abated”and he turned around and headed back to Bristol an hour later.”
“When Wesley suspected his wife of reading his private mail, he had his desk outfitted with a secret compartment in which to hide his sensitive papers from her. These presumably must have included portions of his famous Journal , for in one bitter letter to her he explained that his indictment of her character was incomplete because he did not have his journal with him at the moment: “I have therefore only my memory to depend on; and that is not very retentive of evil.” No surprise, then, that he did not attend her funeral, and of her own legacy of five thousand pounds (holdings from her first husband, a wealthy merchant), she bequeathed to him only a ring.”
“Tomkins does, however, absolve Wesley of the charge of adultery, a charge hurled at him by none other than his ultra-suspicious wife. But while always faithful to his marriage vows, Wesley, as his biographer freely admits, “suffered from a failure to discern between the romantic and pastoral, which blighted his romances and cast a shadow over his pastoring.””
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/12/john-wesley-a-biography
LikeLike
I don’t really get the desire for “extreme success” in the abstract, even if it’s possible to achieve it. She suggests you have to be obsessed with something, but you can’t really control what you’re obsessed with. So you have to find the thing – but that thing is what you’re looking for, not “success.”
LikeLike
I used to read her livejournal when she was posting regularly-she seems to have moved a lot to Twitter and other blogs (perhaps paid work). When I first started reading her she was still negotiating the terms of the divorce and my dislike of Elon Musk started then.
LikeLike