Here’s What Tesla’s Elon Musk Does to Relax
Between running Tesla (now large enough to join the Fortune 500 list for the first time), leading rocket startup SpaceX, and launching various other futuristic ventures, Elon Musk doesn’t have a lot of time to spare.
Yet during a Q&A at the Tesla shareholder meeting Tuesday, Musk took a question, submitted on Twitter, about how he relaxes after work. After initially acknowledging that his after-hours agenda is “usually work more,” Musk said he typically does “normal stuff” off the clock. Last weekend, for example, he saw the new hit movie Wonder Woman with his kids. (He has also recently been photographed ziplining in Australia, and earlier this week tweeted while visiting the DMV.)
After a moment’s hesitation, though, the Tesla CEO added that he has other pastimes, or at least habits. “Sometimes go crazy on Twitter,” he told shareholders at the meeting. “Yeah with a little red wine, vintage record player, some Ambien--magic! Magic happens,” he continued. (Ambien is a sleep medication that can be prescribed for insomnia; doctors recommend against taking it with alcohol.)
He repeated the comments in a tweet a few hours later.
A little red wine, vintage record, some Ambien … and magic!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 7, 2017
Musk also assured Tesla shareholders that even if he often tweets about his other companies, most of them take up very little of his time.
After all, Musk explained, he spends at least 90% of his time on either the electric car company or SpaceX; 3% to 5% on Neuralink, a venture aiming to create interfaces between the human brain and machine-learning technology; 2% on his new tunneling project called the Boring Company; and the remainder on OpenAI, a non-profit dedicated to artificial intelligence research.
“I might tweet a lot about the Boring Company, which is basically a hobby--I wouldn't even call it a real company right now,” Musk said. “It’s got three people, some interns and some part-time people. There’s, like, no pressure.”
Tesla, which besides developing self-driving cars is also pushing into solar power after acquiring SolarCity last year, tends to keep him the most busy, Musk added. “Tesla is like a drama magnet, so I have to deal with Tesla drama,” he said.
(For more on Tesla, see the new Fortune feature, “Tesla Takes Off In China.”)
Musk also hinted that he is working to improve the song selection available in Tesla cars, where he prefers to listen to music, and that there would be “some exciting announcements” about that later this year. By Musk’s description, the new offering sounded a bit like a potential competitor to Spotify: “I think it's very hard to find good playlists and good matching algorithms,” Musk said. “I think it could work really great. This is going to be the music you want to listen to. Well, at least I want to listen to it.”
As for another popular American form of recreation, Musk (who grew up in South Africa) said he has little use for it: “It may not shock you, but sports is not something I do a lot of.”
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