Elon Musk explains his 5-step algorithm for solving any problem:
"The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist."
"I have this very basic first principles algorithm that I run as a mantra."
Elon breaks it down:
Step 1: Question the requirements.
"Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are always dumb to some degree, no matter how smart the person who gave you those requirements. You have to start there, because otherwise you could get the perfect answer to the wrong question."
Step 2: Try to delete it.
"Try to delete the part or the process step entirely. If you're not forced to put back at least 10% of what you delete, you're not deleting enough. Most people feel like they've succeeded if they haven't been forced to put things back in. But actually they haven't, they've been overly conservative and left things in that shouldn't be there."
Step 3: Optimize or simplify.
"The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist. So you don't optimize until after you've tried to delete."
Step 4: Speed it up.
"Any given thing can be done faster than you think. But you shouldn't speed things up until you've tried to delete it and optimize it otherwise, you're speeding up something that shouldn't exist."
Step 5: Automate.
"And then the fifth thing is to automate it."
Elon explains why the order matters:
"I've gone backwards so many times where I've automated something, sped it up, simplified it, and then deleted it. I got tired of doing that. So that's why I have this mantra."
You think you’re going thru some shit? Watch Eric Dane give his final words to his kids and the reevaluate how much of a chance you got since you’re still on this planet. God bless
Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.
Anthony Bourdain
The Hollow Men
American capitalism is rotting from the head down. We have replaced the "Owner-Operator"—the risk-taker-with a new, parasitic class of corporate bureaucrat: The Risk-Free Insider.
By "Insider," I am not referring to a specific title. I am referring to the entire administrative state that has captured the modern corporation. This includes the Directors who exist solely to collect fees, the Executives who exist solely to collect bonuses, and the Managers who exist solely to hire consultants.
These are the hollow men of the boardroom. They are masters of PowerPoint. They wear the right suits. They say the right buzzwords about "governance" and "ESG." But they are mercenaries fighting a war with someone else’s ammunition.
In a functioning economy, authority is tied to liability. If you make a bad decision, you lose your own money. That fear of loss is the only thing that keeps a business honest. It forces you to cut waste, obsess over the customer, and stay late to fix what is broken.
Today, we have severed that link.
We have rigged the game so that heads, the Insider wins; tails, the shareholder loses.
If the stock goes up, the Insider collects a massive performance bonus. If the stock crashes due to their own incompetence, they are fired with a "Golden Parachute" worth tens of millions. They are gambling with the house’s money, and they never leave the table poorer than they arrived.
This looting starts in the boardroom.
We have normalized a "Country Club" culture where directors are selected based on social profiling rather than their ability to build a business. The modern board member is often a professional tourist—paid an average of $350,000 a year.
Let’s be brutally honest about what that number represents. The average director is paid nearly five times the GDP per capita of the United States. They earn more for attending four quarterly lunches than the vast majority of Americans earn in five years of hard labor.
And for what?
Most of these directors are "over-boarded," sitting on three or four boards simultaneously. They treat directorships as a gig economy for the elite. They fly in, rubber-stamp a compensation package they didn't read, and fly out. They collect checks from companies they do not understand, do not use, and certainly do not love.
They are not there to ask hard questions. They are there to be collegial. They are there to protect the other Insiders.
And what happens when these boards hire executives who also have no personal capital at risk?
We get the Delegation Economy.
When a Risk-Free Insider faces a crisis—bloated expenses, a broken supply chain, or a stale product—they do not roll up their sleeves. They hire a consultant. They pay a strategy firm millions of shareholder dollars to produce a 100-page deck telling them what they already know.
This is not management. It is intellectual money laundering.
They use shareholder capital to buy an insurance policy for their own careers. If the plan fails, they can blame the consultants. They delegate the work because they are terrified of the responsibility. They would rather preside over a slow, comfortable decline than risk a bold mistake.
While American Insiders are busy optimizing their severance packages, our global competitors are optimizing their products. They are not slowed down by bureaucracy. They are not waiting for a slide deck. They are outworking us.
If we continue to fill our C-suites with administrators instead of operators, we will lose our edge. We will see iconic American franchises hollowed out by fees, managed for the benefit of the Insiders, while the true owners—the shareholders—are left holding the bag.
The time for polite governance is over.
If we want to save the American economy from mediocrity, we must demand a return to the "Owner’s Mentality." We need leaders who treat shareholder capital with the same reverence they treat their own savings. The era of the Risk-Free Insider must end.
@Amer1can_Barbie Amen! And it does seem it’s slipping away. Disintegration is the future … as we’re comforted with AI
To those who knew better times, it’s unbelievable … sail away
"I didn't realize that if the average year the money grows at ~10%, and the average return in the S&P 500 is ~9.7%, then all of the value created there is the money printer.
That was startling.”
- @tadtweets, former finance professor at Stern School of Business