Productivity Tips With Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates

I name-dropped the holy crap out of that headline. Let’s discuss the productivity tips of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates.

Why would you read this article?

There is a good chance you are reading this article because you want to emulate the success of these world renowned business men.

We think to do that we should mimic their behaviour and way of thinking. Afterall it worked for them so logically it should work for us to.

This does make sense, however, it’s a massive oversimplification of success.

Maradona became rich and famous for playing football. I played football, why am I not rich and famous?!?

It’s clear that oversimplifying success doesn’t really get us anywhere, however, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from people who have done great things.

Every now and again, we can pick up a little gem of advice that fits nicely into our life and benefits us, and makes our life just a little bit better.

Read on, maybe one of these top guns said something that will resonate with you that will improve your life.

Productivity Tips With Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates

Bill Gates

Bill is a firm believer in meditation and the benefits it brings to focus the mind. Mr. Gates is quoted as saying:

“Meditation is simply exercise for the mind, similar to the way we exercise our muscles when we play sports,”.

He has implied that meditation allows him to gain separation from his thoughts, which focuses the mind.

This makes sense to me as I have personally practiced meditation for 5 years and this is true.

One of the greatest gifts of meditation is that it teaches us that we are not our thoughts and that we are not our emotions. This allows us to put things into perspective as well as giving us the ability to focus on the thoughts and emotions we do want. A massive game-changer.

You can read more about my experience with meditation in the article Learn Who You’re NOT to Unlock Who You ARE.

Steve Jobs

During Apple’s 1997 Worldwide Developers Conference, Mr. Jobs said, “Focusing is about saying ‘no,’”.

Steve went on to say “Focus means saying ‘no’ to the hundred other good ideas,”.

This stance immediately makes me think of the famous Jim Carey movie “YES Man”.

In this hilarious movie the main character played by the much beloved Jim Carey says Yes to all kinds of opportunities as they present themselves.

Hilarity ensues as we get to see Mr. Carey get himself into all sorts of ridiculous situations to the point where he just can’t cope with life and needs to rethink it.

I guess Steve Jobs must have watched this movie and realized doing the exact opposite would have a great impact on his productivity.

I’d have to agree with Steve on this one. So many people out there want your time, money, and energy, if you give it out too freely, there will be nothing left for the things that matter.

Jeff Bezos

Jeff stated the following in his 2016 letter to shareholders:

“Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70 percent of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90 percent, in most cases, you’re probably being slow.”

This is challenging one for a lot of people to accept, as people don’t like taking risks.

I mean everybody loves taking risks when they’re right, but when they are wrong they look like idiots and lose trust.

So should we take Jeff’s advice on this?

The verdict is still out, for me, it really depends on two things:

1. Your ability to reverse the decision
2. Being ok with the worst-case scenario

With that in mind I’d say yes Jeff is on the money providing you take the above two components into account.

Making quick decisions just to be first is wreck-less and irresponsible. Not everything in life is about being first Jeff. (Really hope he reads this)

Elon Musk

In 2018 the CEO shared in a letter to employees regarding productivity:

“Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time,”

and he continued…

“Get rid frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter.”

For me this advice is full of arrogance.

Let’s be honest Elon probably has an army of people underneath him having all those meetings Elon thinks are of little importance.

I’m sure if everybody in Elon’s organization took this stance, there wouldn’t be much left for Elon to be the CEO of.

Don’t get me wrong, there should be clear criteria for having a meeting and all meetings should have clear goals and impact on the outcome.

With this, in mind, I’d like to sit down with Elon and advise him to rethink his very public policy on meetings.

He may think a meeting with me is a waste of time, but I’d beg to differ.

Certainly, I’d agree there are a lot of pointless meetings, but saying a meeting is not important if it’s not urgent is way out of line.

I doubt Elon thinks working in a constant state of panic is a good thing.

Raise the criteria by which you have meetings, but don’t dismiss them because you are not dealing with an urgent matter.

I’m sure these men have a lot to teach me when it comes to productivity tips and I am open to learning. But the best teachers not only question their students but also themselves as well.

This article was inspired by the article on cnbc