What Musk Says About What It Means to Work "Super Hard"

"It depends on how well you want to do, especially if you are starting a company, you need to work super hard. What does 'super hard' mean? Well, when my brother and I started our first company, we didn't rent an apartment, but only a small office, and then slept on the sofa. We showered at the YMCA. We only had one computer at that time, so the website was running during the day, and at night I wrote code - seven days a week, it was always like that."

Elon Musk recalled that he briefly had a girlfriend, and if she wanted to be with him, she had to sleep in the office as well. He treated this as an arithmetic relationship: if you are starting a company:

"If others work 50 hours a week and you work 100 hours a week, then over the course of a year, you will complete twice the amount of work compared to the other company."