Elon Musk could have stopped working a long time ago. Ask him when he last took a real vacation and the answer tells you who he is. Elon Musk told The New York Times in August 2018 that he had been working up to 120 hours a week, and that he had not taken more than a week off since 2001, when malaria left him bedridden. He told Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes the same year there was one week where he worked 120 hours and did not leave the factory, did not even go outside. He wanted the team to see that however hard it was for them, he would make it worse for himself. In November 2018 he put the standard in his own words on X: "There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week." When someone asked him what the correct number was, Elon Musk answered: "Varies per person, but about 80 sustained, peaking above 100 at times. Pain level increases exponentially above 80." Years later he said out loud what the factories already knew. At the Baron Investment Conference in 2022 Elon Musk said he had lived in the Fremont factory and the Nevada factory for three years straight, and that those were his primary residences. He slept on a couch, then on the floor under his desk, so the team would see him at every shift change. He called it damn uncomfortable and said he smelled like dust. He wanted them to know he was not off drinking Mai Tais on a tropical island. On November 14, 2022 he posted from San Francisco: "I've been at Twitter SF HQ all night. Will be working & sleeping here until org is fixed." Electric cars, reusable rockets, satellite internet, brain interfaces, tunnels under cities. Elon Musk had already built more than most people dream of, and when the hardest stretch arrived he still went and slept where the work was.