Elon Musk: Imperfections Aren't Always Important

When something's off the little thing, how do you experience that?

It drives me bananas. Yeah, I mean, the problem is you can train yourself to pay attention to the tiny details. I think almost anyone can. Although this is very much a double edged sword because then you see all the little details and then little things drive you crazy. But like most people don't, they don't see, they don't consciously see the small details, but they do subconsciously see them. Like your mind takes in a gestalt of the overall impression and you know if something is appealing or not, even though you may not be able to point out exactly why. And it's the summation of these many small details.

So most of us experience it as a, oh, I think that's ugly, or I think that's beautiful. Or like, wow, that's elegant, but can't break it down. You mentioned something in passing, like, you can train yourself in this though.

Yeah, you can train yourself. I think you can make yourself pay attention to why you're essentially bring the subconscious awareness into conscious awareness.

God, I wish I could do that. How do you do that?

Just pay really close attention.

Almost like a meditation on the object and trying to find the details. Like, why do I not. Like this? Is that what.

Yeah, just look closely and carefully and for any given object, it's geometry.

I heard someone was for Steve Jobs and that thought occurred to me as well. I worked briefly with him and I could only experience it as a visceral agitation with imperfection. And like that's just wrong. Like that has to be fixed.

I have to turn it off, otherwise I can't go through life. It just. Yeah, it's.

Yeah, it's the world around you or even in.

Yeah, yeah. Because there's always something wrong somewhere, all the time. And so you really have to turn it off. Otherwise, you know, you just get the, like the list of, the mental list of things that are wrong just drives you crazy.