Elon Musk’s Algorithm: The 5-Step Process and How to Use It in Daily Life

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Most people try to improve a messy process by making it faster or adding a tool. Elon Musk’s “algorithm” argues that’s usually the wrong place to start. Before you speed anything up or automate it, you should first ask whether it needs to exist at all.

Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography Elon Musk (Simon & Schuster) describes a five-step process Musk repeats at production meetings at Tesla and SpaceX. Isaacson calls it “the algorithm,” and he writes that it was shaped by the lessons Musk learned during the “production hell” periods at Tesla’s Nevada and Fremont factories. Musk admits he repeats it constantly: “I became a broken record on the algorithm. But I think it’s helpful to say it to an annoying degree.”

This guide explains each of the five steps, why the order matters so much, real examples from Musk’s companies, and how to use the same process on your personal routines and a small business.

The 5 Steps at a Glance

As written in Isaacson’s book, the algorithm has five steps:

1. Question every requirement.
2. Delete any part or process you can.
3. Simplify and optimize.
4. Accelerate cycle time.
5. Automate.

Musk has described the same steps in his own words, too. On a 2021 tour of SpaceX’s Starbase site in Texas with YouTuber Tim Dodd, he put step one as “make your requirements less dumb,” as reported by The Independent.

The process grew out of manufacturing, but its logic is general. It’s a close cousin of first principles thinking, which means breaking a problem down to basic facts instead of copying what others do. The algorithm takes that mindset and turns it into a repeatable checklist.

Step 1: Question Every Requirement

In Isaacson’s telling, every requirement “should come with the name of the person who made it.” You shouldn’t accept that a rule came from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the actual person, and then question the requirement “no matter how smart that person is.” The book adds a warning: “Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them.”

Example from his companies: On the 2021 Starbase tour, Musk said a requirement should come from “a name not a department,” because otherwise “you could have a requirement that an intern two years ago randomly came up with off the cuff and they’re not even at the company any more.” He said this “has happened several times.” (The Independent)

Why it comes first: Everything that follows depends on the requirements. If a requirement is wrong, every later step will just help you do the wrong thing more efficiently.

Step 2: Delete Any Part or Process You Can

This is the step most people skip. Isaacson’s version reads: “Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough.”

That 10% rule is the interesting part. It says that if you never have to put anything back, you were too cautious. A little over-deleting is a sign you’re doing it right.

Example from his companies: Standing in front of a Super Heavy booster on the Starbase tour, Musk pointed to its grid fins, which don’t fold down, as an example of minimal design. Folding them would be “a whole extra mechanism that we don’t need,” he said. He also criticized the habit of adding parts or checks “just in case,” noting that people can “make ‘in-case’ arguments for so many things.” (The Independent)

Step 3: Simplify and Optimize

Only after deleting should you start improving what’s left. Isaacson writes that “a common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.”

Musk made the same point on the Starbase tour: “It’s very common – possibly the most common – for a smart engineer to optimise a thing that should not exist.” He blamed school for part of this. Students are trained to answer the question they’re given, not to ask whether it’s the right question. He called that habit a “mental straitjacket.” (The Independent)

The fiberglass mat story: what happens when you go in the wrong order

Musk’s best-known example of this mistake comes from the Model 3 battery pack line in 2018. Fiberglass mats were placed on top of the battery pack, between the pack and the car’s floor, and a robot was slowing the whole line.

On Tesla’s May 2018 earnings call, Musk said the company had a “FluffBot” that picked up the mats and placed them on the pack, and that “FluffBot would frequently just fail to pick up the fluff.” Tesla tested whether the mats made any difference to cabin noise, found they didn’t, and dropped them. (Ars Technica)

On the Starbase tour in 2021, Musk described how he’d first tried to improve the robot and speed it up before asking what the mats were for. The battery safety team said they were for noise and vibration. The noise and vibration team said they were for fire safety. Once tests showed no one could hear a difference, the mats were deleted. In his telling, “automating was a mistake, accelerating was a mistake.” (The Independent)

The lesson: weeks of tuning went into a part that shouldn’t have existed. Steps one and two would have caught it first.

Step 4: Accelerate Cycle Time

Cycle time is how long it takes to complete one round of a process, whether that’s building one battery pack, launching one rocket, or answering one customer email. Isaacson’s version says: “Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps.”

Examples from his companies:

• Battery packs. On the same May 2018 call, Musk said the time to produce a Model 3 battery pack had dropped from 7 hours to 70 minutes, and that the pack line was no longer the production bottleneck. (Ars Technica)
• Reusable boosters. For most of spaceflight history, a rocket’s first stage was thrown away after one flight. On March 30, 2017, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 with a first stage that had already flown in April 2016, then landed it again on a drone ship. Musk said it meant “you can fly and refly an orbit-class booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket.” (Space.com) Reusing the booster shortens the time between launches because you don’t have to build a new first stage for every mission.

Step 5: Automate

Automation comes last. Isaacson quotes Musk: “The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out.”

Examples from his companies:

• Tesla’s battery factory in Nevada. Isaacson describes a production line full of robots that didn’t work well. When team members found they could do one robot’s job more reliably by hand, Tesla began removing automation wherever it caused delays. Tesla co-founder JB Straubel told Isaacson: “We began sawing robots out of the production line and throwing them into the parking lot.”
• The April 2018 tweet. During the Model 3 ramp-up, Musk told CBS that “we had this crazy, complex network of conveyor belts” that “was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing.” On April 13, 2018, he tweeted: “Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.” (CNBC; TechCrunch)

The point isn’t that automation is bad. The point is that automating a broken or unnecessary step just locks the problem in, at a higher cost.

Why the Order Matters

Each step protects the one after it:

• If you simplify before you delete, you waste effort polishing things you’ll later throw away.
• If you speed up before you simplify, you make a confusing process run faster, including its mistakes.
• If you automate before everything else, you spend money building machines, software, or systems around a process that may not even need to exist.

This idea isn’t unique to Musk. In 1990, management thinker Michael Hammer argued in the Harvard Business Review that companies shouldn’t use technology to “automate” outdated processes but should rethink, or “obliterate,” them first. (HBR, “Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate”) Lean manufacturing makes a similar case for removing waste before adding anything new. This guide to lean principles for small business operations covers that side in more detail.

It’s also fair to note the limits. Isaacson’s book makes clear that Musk’s pace and management style have critics, including people who worked closely with him. And the “delete” step needs judgment. Laws, safety requirements, and customer promises exist for real reasons. The algorithm says to question them, not to ignore them.

How to Use the Algorithm in Your Personal Life

You can run the same five steps on any routine that feels heavier than it should.

Example: A chaotic morning routine

1. Question: Who decided the kids need a hot breakfast every weekday? Who said you have to check email before you leave? Is that rule yours or just a habit?
2. Delete: Drop the steps that don’t matter. Maybe the bed doesn’t need to be made on weekdays, and the news can wait until lunch.
3. Simplify: Pick clothes and pack bags the night before. Keep one breakfast routine for the whole week.
4. Accelerate: Time the routine for a few days and then work on the slowest step, such as finding keys or shoes.
5. Automate: Only now add automatic help: a coffee maker timer, a recurring grocery order, or a phone reminder to leave.

Example: Personal finances

1. Question every recurring bill. Why do you have it, and who signed up for it?
2. Delete subscriptions and services you don’t use.
3. Simplify to fewer accounts and cards.
4. Accelerate your monthly review so it takes 15 minutes, not an afternoon.
5. Automate savings transfers and bill payments last, once you know what’s left is what you actually want.

Once you’ve cleaned up a routine, setting a clear target helps it stick. This guide to SMART goals for personal life shows how to write one.

How to Use the Algorithm in a Small Business

The algorithm fits small businesses especially well, because small teams often add tools and steps faster than they remove them.

Example: Handling customer orders

1. Question every requirement. Why does every order need a manager’s approval? Who made that rule, and does it still make sense for small orders?
2. Delete. Remove duplicate data entry, such as typing the same order into a spreadsheet and an invoicing app. Drop a report no one reads.
3. Simplify and optimize. Use one order form with only the fields you actually need. Create a short checklist for the steps that remain.
4. Accelerate cycle time. Measure how long it takes from order to delivery. Find the slowest step and work on that one first.
5. Automate. Now connect the tools, for example by having online orders create invoices automatically, because you’re automating a clean process, not a messy one.

If problems keep coming back even after you’ve streamlined a process, you may need to dig into root causes. This guide on how to improve problem-solving skills walks through a simple method for that.

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