Elon Musk says weekly skip-level meetings expose the 'glazed' lieutenants every CEO trusts.
A typical Fortune 500 CEO held a meeting once a month.
Their direct reports presented prepared slides.
Their direct reports' reports never made the room.
The CEO heard the version of reality their VPs wanted them to hear.
"I have these very detailed engineering reviews weekly."
Skip-level. No agenda. No prep.
Everyone in the room. All reports flow up at once.
The format was designed to make pre-meeting choreography impossible.
Run the meeting before it runs you.
Then Musk named what choreography produces.
"Otherwise you're going to get glazed, as I say these days."
Musk named the corporate disease: **glazed**.
Polished. Predictable. Almost useless.
Musk, who ran weekly engineering reviews across Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, knew the glaze on sight.
A direct report with 48 hours to prepare an answer would deliver the version of reality that protected their team, their roadmap, and their compensation â while the engineer two levels below them, asked the same question cold, would say what was actually happening on the floor.
"I just go around the room. Everyone provides an update."
No slides. No deck. No script.
Question and answer, traded live.
After Musk standardized the format, corporate truth started matching shop-floor truth.
Bad news arrived earlier. Course corrections happened faster.
Compensation arguments shortened.
Musk, on what the weekly cadence buys:
"It's a lot of information to keep in your head."
What in your weekly meetings is already a rehearsal nobody admits to?
P.S. I made a playbook breaking down 100+ most powerful decision making mental models used by history's greatest thinkers.
5,000+ downloads. 113 five-star reviews.
Grab a free copy here:
https://t.co/u2q1uUm9vD
If you're new here, @GeniusGTX is a gallery for the greatest minds in economics, psychology, and history. Follow along for more similar content.
â Elon Musk ( @elonmusk ), CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, on Dwarkesh Patel's ( @dwarkesh_sp ) podcast
30 years ago today, Steve Yzerman scored one of the most iconic goals in Red Wings history as he eliminated the Blues in double OT of Game 7 đš
(H/T: @espn)
In March 2010, an Apple engineer named Gray Powell walked into Gerstner's Bar in Redwood City with an unreleased iPhone 4 prototype disguised as an iPhone 3GS.
He left without it.
Jobs later explained why the phone was out in the world at all: "To make a wireless product work well, you have to test it. And there's no way to test it in a lab completely, so you actually have to carry them and test them out."
The phone ended up with a 21 year old named Brian Hogan. What happened next is still disputed. Jobs put it simply: "There's a debate as to whether it was left in a bar or stolen out of his bag."
Hogan tried to return it. Called Apple's support line. Got nowhere. So he called Engadget. Then Gizmodo.
Gizmodo paid $5,000 for it.
They published a full teardown. Front-facing camera. Flat edges. Glass back. The entire design of Apple's next flagship phone, months before launch, exposed to the world.
But here's the part most people missed. Jobs revealed: "The person that got the phone tried to activate it by plugging it into his roommate's computer. And she's the one that called the police. That's why they got the search warrant."
Not Apple. The roommate.
Police showed up at Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's house. Seized computers. Hard drives. Everything. The tech press exploded. "Apple is retaliating against journalists."
Jobs found the whole situation almost cinematic: "This is a story that's amazing. It's got theft. It's got buying stolen property. It's got extortion. I'm sure there's sex in there somewhere. Somebody should make a movie out of this."
But he wasn't laughing about what came next.
"I got a lot of advice from people that said you've got to just let it slide. You shouldn't go after a journalist because they bought stolen property and they tried to extort you."
Most CEOs would have taken that advice. Bad optics. Not worth the fight. Move on.
Jobs didn't.
"I thought deeply about this and I ended up concluding that the worst thing that could possibly happen as we get big and we get a little more influence in the world is if we change our core values and start letting it slide."
Then he said something that explains everything about how he built Apple:
"I can't do that. I'd rather quit."
He continued: "We have the same values now as we had then. We're maybe a little more experienced, certainly more beat up, but the core values are the same. And we come into work wanting to do the same thing today as we did five or 10 years ago, which is build the best products for people."
This wasn't about a phone. It was about what Apple would tolerate as it scaled. Most companies loosen their standards as they grow. They pick battles. They let things slide because fighting is expensive and messy.
Jobs saw that as the beginning of the end. The moment you compromise once, you've established that compromise is available.
I broke my phone addiction in 30 days.
âą Screen Time down ~70%
âą Phone pickups down ~50%
I reclaimed 4 hours 30 minutes per day. That's 1,635 hours across a full year. 68 days of life from a single behavior change.
Here's exactly what I did (save this):
1. Grayscale Mode
Put your phone on Grayscale Mode for the entire day.
Grayscale Mode removes the colors to make your phone immediately less appealing and addicting.
It takes 30 seconds to set up.
If you have an iPhone, follow these steps:
âą Settings
âą Accessibility
âą Display & Text Size
âą Color Filters -> On
âą Grayscale
Next, create a simple shortcut:
âą Settings
âą Accessibility
âą Accessibility Shortcut
âą Color Filters
Now, if you triple-click the side button, you'll be able to toggle it on and off.
For non-iPhone users, you can find instructionsâ with a simple search.
I kept my phone on Grayscale at all times and only removed it for specific reasons (like posting something that required me to see the color, looking at photos, etc.).
It made me less interested in grabbing my phone for the random "just checks" during the day.
2. No-Phone Zones
Set specific locations, times, and events where you won't have your phone on you.
I called them No-Phone Zones:
âą Downstairs (kitchen, living room)
âą Creative flow time (from ~5-8am)
âą Family flow time (from ~5-7pm)
âą Family gatherings
During these windows, my phone would be in a lock box or in a drawer in my office. If we were out at a family gathering, I would leave it in the car or in my wife's bag where I couldn't feel it.
Specifically listing out these No-Phone Zones had the benefit of making it a clear rule that I could cement in my mind.
Create your list of No-Phone Zones. Write it down if you need to.
3. Strategic Friction
Even with the Grayscale Mode and No-Phone Zones, my phone addiction intervention would have been difficult to execute without this final piece of the puzzle.
Motivation and discipline are never enough when you're trying to crack a deeply entrenched behavior.
There's a theory in cognitive science called Choice Architecture, which is the idea that you can design your environment to make good choices easier and bad choices harder.
Basically, I wanted to add strategic friction to make it much easier to adhere to my rules (and much more difficult to break them).
Three primary ways I did that:
1. I locked my phone in a âlock boxâ during my morning creative flow (5-8am) and evening family flow (5-7pm). It was a timed lock so I couldnât get it without emailing the company.
2. I left my phone far away from where I was going to be working. If I wanted to get it, I'd have to walk to the other side of the house or down a few flights of stairs to get it.
3. I added really low screen time restrictions to social apps. If I wanted to overuse them, I'd have to keep approving more time, which felt like letting myself down when I did it.
Breaking the addiction is going to be difficult at first. Create strategic friction that helps you stick to the change. Make it difficult to make a bad choice.
The Life Impact
I'm not going to sugarcoat it at all:
This was the single most powerful behavior change I've ever made in terms of the tangible impact and ripple effects on my life.
That is not an exaggeration.
I was more present, less stressed, and able to connect on an entirely different level. In short, I showed up more aligned with how my ideal self would.
My capacity for deep work expanded significantly from simply placing my phone in another room or a lock box.
I got more done, faster, at a higher quality bar. It was like the holy trinity of productivity improvement, with no fancy productivity tool required.
Reviewing the research, this isn't surprising: There is clear âscientific evidenceâ that even having your phone in your pocket or on your desk reduces your cognitive capacity.
I felt happier and less stressed immediately upon making the change.
So, just keeping score...
This was a single, zero cost behavior change that had the net effect of:
âą Improving my relationships
âą Improving my work
âą Improving my happiness
To be completely transparent, just a few days in, the only negative thought I had related to the intervention was simple:
Why didn't I do this sooner?
I hope this is the push you need to make this change in your life.
Start small and stick to it. Aim for a 10-20% screen time reduction week-over-week. Keep yourself accountable with a friend.
Having now gone through it, I can guarantee you'll see and feel the positive impact immediately.
Onward and upward.
EstĂĄs aburrido porque no haces misiones secundarias, tĂo.
La vida es algo mĂĄs que solo trabajar y tirarte en la cama sin hacer nada.
AquĂ tienes 50 misiones secundarias para completar:
And just like that, we are HUGE Cade Cunningham fans
âI get my aura from Jesus Christ - my Lord and Savior. God blessed me with parents who raised me in a way I wouldnât trade for the world.â
(Via @omarisankofa đ„)
All of this could and should happen by the end of 2026:
Michigan Basketball to at least the Final 4
MSU Hoops to the Elite 8
Michigan, Western, and MSU Hockey all make the Frozen Four
Wings return to the playoffs
Pistons at worst make the NBA Finals
Tigers get to the World Series
Michigan Football gets a CFB Playoff Spot
MSU Football is bowl eligible
Lions win 13 games and NFC North