Stop Optimizing Your Life. Start Specifying It.
10 min read
How Elon Musk's five-step engineering algorithm helps engineers build a life worth living.
The five steps
- Step 1. Make your requirements less dumb. Question every “should.” Whose voice is it really?
- Step 2. Delete the part or the process. Most of your calendar can be removed. Joy needs space.
- Step 3. Simplify and optimize. Only after deletion. Otherwise you polish the wrong rock.
- Step 4. Speed up the cycle. Learn faster, not do faster. Weekly check-ins beat New Year's resolutions fifty times over.
- Step 5. Automate. Last. Not first.
Why I needed this
I spent ten years getting really good at the wrong things.
I had the right job. The right titles. The right plan to become an astronaut. I was optimizing every part of my life. I was also a little bit miserable. I just didn't know it yet.
Then I came across something from Elon Musk. Love him or hate him for many reasons, the man knows how to question requirements.
In a 2021 walking interview at SpaceX's Starbase facility with Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut), Musk shared the five-step process SpaceX uses to build rockets. He calls it an algorithm. They use it to build rockets. It also works for building a life.
The five steps, in order:
- Step 1. Make your requirements less dumb.
- Step 2. Delete the part or the process.
- Step 3. Simplify and optimize.
- Step 4. Speed up the cycle.
- Step 5. Automate.
Most of us start at step five. Then we wonder why we feel so tired.
Let me walk you through it.
Step 1: Why are your requirements probably wrong?
Musk says all requirements are dumb. Even the smart ones. Especially the smart ones. Because nobody questions them.
Your life is full of these.
You think you need a corner office. You think you need a partner by 35. You think you need to look like the people in the ads. You think you need your boss to like you. You think you need that promotion before you can rest.
Who told you that? A parent? A teacher? A boss? The internet?
Now ask yourself a kind question. Is it still true? Was it ever?
Most of the things we work toward were never things we picked. They were things we inherited. And then we kept building. Like a rocket with the wrong flight plan.
I won't tell you what your requirements should be. That part is yours. But I'll tell you one thing I've learned. A real life requirement is something you can shape. Not something that depends on a long list of conditions falling into place outside of you.
The good news is, underneath every dumb requirement, there is usually a real one waiting. The astronaut dream might really be about exploring, learning, doing something meaningful with your hands. The promotion might really be about feeling respected. The marriage might really be about being a person who shows up well for the people you love.
Those are things you can actually do something about today.
Step 2: What should you delete this week?
The second step is the bravest one. Try to delete the thing.
Delete the meeting. Delete the chore. Delete the goal that was never yours. Delete the rule you've been following so long you forgot you made it up.
Musk says if you don't end up adding back at least 10% of what you deleted, you didn't delete enough.
Read that again.
Most of us are scared to delete. So we add. We add a journal. We add a workout. We add another app. We add a side project. We get so full of “good things” that there's no room left for joy.
Joy needs space. So does peace. So does love.
What could you delete this week?
Step 3: When does optimization actually help?
This is the step most people jump to first. Don't. Musk warns against it for a reason. “The most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize a thing that should not exist.”
Simplify and optimize means this. Take what is left after steps one and two, and make the pieces work together more smoothly. Fewer moving parts. Cleaner connections. Less friction.
In a rocket, that might mean combining two systems into one. In a life, it might mean stacking your morning walk with the call you owe your mother. Or batching your errands. Or noticing that meditation, journaling, and your evening tea were all trying to do the same thing, so you keep one and drop the other two.
The trap here is real. If you skipped steps one and two, you will polish the wrong rock. You will buy a better planner for a calendar full of meetings that should not exist.
Optimization only pays off after you've questioned the requirements and deleted what you can. Otherwise, you're just making the wrong life run more smoothly.
This is where life starts to feel light.
Step 4: How do you speed up the cycle without rushing?
This step is easy to misread. It is not about doing your life faster. It's not about racing through breakfast or rushing your kids out the door.
It's about how often you learn.
In engineering, cycle time is how long it takes to test something, see what happens, and try again. A team that ships once a year learns once a year. A team that ships every week learns 50 times faster.
Your life works the same way.
If you only check in with yourself once a year, maybe at New Year's with a glass of wine and a list of resolutions, you are running a slow cycle. If you sit down every Sunday for ten minutes and ask, “What worked? What didn't? What do I want to try next week?”, your cycle is fifty times faster.
You don't have to do more. You just have to learn faster from what you're already doing.
But this only works if steps one through three are in place. Going faster in the wrong direction will not save you. It will just get you to the wrong place sooner.
Step 5: Why is automation last, not first?
Musk is firm about this. It comes last.
And yet most of us start here. We download a habit tracker. We buy a planner. We hire a coach. I hope it's a good one. The kind who helps you question the life before optimizing it.
A planner cannot save a life built on bad requirements. Neither can I, by the way. I will not help you optimize a life that should not exist.
A quiet truth
I spent years working toward the European Space Agency astronaut program. I trained. I studied. I built the résumé. I checked every box.
They didn't pick me.
That sounds personal, but it isn't really. ESA selects a handful of astronauts out of more than 22,500 applicants, and they only do it about once a decade. It depends on health. On nationality. On timing. On a hundred small things that no amount of preparation can guarantee. It was never going to be a thing I could simply decide into being.
I was crushed. Then, slowly, I learned something.
Almost everything an astronaut actually does, you can do without being one. Astronauts learn constantly. They train their bodies for hours every day. They travel between agencies and countries. They work in deeply multicultural teams across borders and languages. They do outreach. They try to inspire others. They take care of their health. The only things you really can't do without the job are spacewalks and running experiments in zero gravity.
The dream wasn't dumb. The requirement was. “Be selected by ESA” depended on too many things outside of me. The deeper thing underneath, a life of learning, exploration, service, and human connection, depended on me.
I am still going to apply for the next selection. And if that doesn't work, I'll find another way to fly. The dream isn't dead. The requirement just got smarter.
My spec sheet
A younger version of me wrote my old spec. He was a smart kid. He gave me dumb requirements.
Here is what I have now, after a few rounds of deleting.
Be present with my wife. Be present with my kids. Then comes the work, which looks a lot like an astronaut's life on the ground anyway. Keep learning. Train my body. Travel. Work across cultures and languages. Reach out and help others. Take care of my health.
Every one of those is something I can actually do, today, without anyone's permission.
Try this week
Pick one part of your life that feels heavy.
Don't try to fix it. Don't try to optimize it. Don't buy an app for it.
Ask: “Is this requirement even mine?”
Then ask: “What happens if I delete it?”
You may find, like I did, that the best part of your life is the part that was never there.
Frequently asked questions
Where did Elon Musk's five-step algorithm come from?
Musk introduced it during a 2021 walking interview at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, with Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut). It is the design heuristic SpaceX uses to remove unnecessary parts and processes from rocket production.
What is the most common mistake people make with this algorithm?
Starting at step five (automate) before doing steps one and two (question requirements, delete). You end up automating a life that should not exist.
Does this only work for engineers?
No. The five steps work for any life. Engineers tend to find them easier to start with because the language is familiar. The deeper question, “is this requirement even mine,” is universal.
How is this different from typical productivity advice?
Most productivity advice focuses on steps three and five: simplify, optimize, then automate. Better tools, better systems, more streamlined processes, then a habit tracker on top. Musk's algorithm puts those steps last on purpose. It assumes the bottleneck is what you are trying to do (steps one and two), not how efficiently you are doing it.
Where do I start?
Pick one heavy part of your life. Ask whose requirement it really is. If it isn't yours, try deleting it for a week.
Sources and further reading
- Tim Dodd, “Elon Musk Walks Us Through SpaceX's Starbase Facility,” Everyday Astronaut, August 2021.
- Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star. The framework for distinguishing your essential self from your social self.
- Boyd Varty, A Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. On following the next track when the full path isn't visible.
If this hit something for you, the Essential Self Diagnostic is 15 questions that take 60 seconds. It's a quick way to spot which of your life requirements are still serving you, and which are just loud.