Elon Musk Says 'Nobody Ever Changed the World' Working 40 Hours a Week

Elon Musk recommends about "80 sustained" hours of work per week if you're interested in doing some world-changing.

November 27, 2018

The 40-hour work week is a myth built to keep otherwise revolutionary humans neck-deep in mindless tasks that serve only to further prop up capitalist interests and to accelerate the inevitable implosion of our species, but I digress.

To that end, Elon Musk would like a word. In a tweet that will surely be taken all different manner of ways out of context, Musk asserted that nothing world-changing ever happened to anyone sticking to 40 hours a week. "There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week," Musk, in response to his own tweet referencing a Wall Street Journal article in which Tesla is touted as "one of Silicon Valley’s most in-demand employers" either despite/because of Musk, said Monday.

Musk then added that, when love is part of the equation, the word "work" may not even apply:

When asked to pinpoint what he feels is the "correct number of hours' required for world-changing work, Musk recommended "80 sustained" with a peak above 100 on occasion. For those keeping a tab at home, that does indeed add up to a lot of fucking time spent at work.

Though Musk's distinction between what does and doesn't feel like "work" is a nice qualifier here, the tweets are still mostly just fodder for those of us growing increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of losing the bulk of our limited time here on this planet doing shit we don't even remotely enjoy anymore, all in some futile effort to emulate (without ever quite getting it right) the status quo.

That was a long sentence, but you know what'll be even longer? An existence spent giving 80+ hours a week to a company.