I want to be Elon Musk. I want to be Dick Costolo. Fortunately for me, the path to getting there is laid out in this post by Musk’s ex-wife. As someone who has always looked to others for role models, I have continuously looked at these people as my heroes. I aspire to be them every day. The end of Justine Musk’s answer hit me hard. She states “Don’t follow a pre-existing path, and don’t look to imitate your role models.” Damn…

I’m never one to stay down though. I’d like to offer a synthesis of Justine’s caricature of the tech greats with my world view. Here are the main points I’d like to keep from her quora answer and how they mesh with what I believe:

The most important piece to keep from her answer is to “Be obsessed. Be obsessed. Be obsessed.” After going through both periods of intense focus and times of directionless meandering I have come to see that the truly inspirational do not follow a straight path. They merely go a hundred miles an hour in anything that marginally sparks their interests. An example: if you watch Dick Costolo in interviews, you realize just how smart he sounds off-the-cuff. These skills came from his time as an improv comedian. That’s right, the CEO of Twitter was a comedian (check here if you don’t believe me).

Another aspect of Justine’s answer is to handle high-levels of stress and uncertainty. Anyone who is operating at the frontier must take risks and have ownership over their failures. Justine says “They will experience heroic, spectacular, humiliating, very public failure but find a way to reframe until it isn’t failure at all.” Spin is amazing. (For a tutorial on spin, watch Thank You for Smoking.)

I have always bought into the philosophy that a person is not able to take on the world alone. “They seek partnerships with people who excel in the areas where they have no talent whatsoever.” People, products, and companies are only able to be great when supported by the efforts of others. We praise the individual because we love a super hero, but it is only with the support of the crowd that the super hero is able to be elevated.

I do disagree with her: if Elon Musk was starting out right now, he would constantly be surfing the net. Books continue to be a fantastic resource, but they are only one of many. Open courseware allows access to courses from the premier institutions. Coding can be learned online. Information becomes dynamic. The opportunity to learn is in the aggregation of all media sources. The important takeaway is to have an insatiable thirst for knowledge.

I still stand by my thoughts on ideation. Nothing is truly original. I like my role models. I like emulating the greats. Even if they are still alive. I want to be Elon Musk. Eventually…

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