{"id":"2064342452782420052","url":"https://x.com/jaynitx/status/2064342452782420052","text":"","author":{"name":"Jaynit","username":"jaynitx","avatarUrl":"https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1871881199372914688/FKDqACyE_200x200.jpg"},"createdAt":"Tue Jun 09 13:42:49 +0000 2026","engagement":{"replies":11,"retweets":116,"likes":532,"views":1681889},"article":{"title":"Elon Musk's Algorithm: the 5-Step process he uses to build everything ","previewText":"There's this story from the Tesla factory that changed how I think about building things.\nThey had an elaborate system for putting fiberglass mats on battery packs. Complex machinery. Multiple steps.","coverImageUrl":"https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKYCqHcasAEX_mw.jpg","content":"There's this story from the Tesla factory that changed how I think about building things.\n\nThey had an elaborate system for putting fiberglass mats on battery packs. Complex machinery. Multiple steps. The whole thing had been carefully designed and optimized over time.\n\nMusk walked in and asked a simple question. Why do we need the fiberglass mats?\n\nThe answer was fire safety. It was a requirement. Everyone knew you needed the mats.\n\nBut when they actually tested it, the mats didn't do much for fire safety. They were a requirement that nobody had questioned. So Musk deleted the entire process.\n\nSaved time, money, complexity. The thing that had been carefully automated shouldn't have existed in the first place.\n\nThis wasn't a one-time thing. Musk apparently does this constantly. He has a five-step algorithm that he drills into his teams at SpaceX and Tesla. And the first thing that struck me when I read about it was that most people do it completely backwards.\n\n## The algorithm\n\nWalter Isaacson wrote about this in his Musk biography. Musk repeats it so often it's become almost a mantra.\n\nThe five steps are:\n\nOne. Question every requirement.\n\nTwo. Delete any part or process you can.\n\nThree. Simplify and optimize.\n\nFour. Accelerate cycle time.\n\nFive. Automate.\n\nThat's it. But the order matters more than the steps themselves.\n\nMost people start at step five. They try to automate first. Or they jump to step four and try to speed things up. Or they go to step three and try to optimize.\n\nBut if you haven't done steps one and two first, you're automating and optimizing things that shouldn't exist.\n\nMusk said:\n\n> \"The most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize a thing that should not exist.\"\n\n![credits: @EricJorgenson](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKX5ld2akAEk4Ep.png)\n\n## Step one: Question every requirement\n\nThis is where Musk gets uncomfortable to listen to.\n\nHe says you should question every requirement, especially if it comes from a smart person. Because smart people are less likely to be questioned. We assume they've thought it through.\n\nMusk tells his teams: \"Each requirement should come with the name of the person who made it. Never accept that a requirement came from a department.\"\n\nDepartments don't have to defend their requirements. People do.\n\nThere's a story about the Model 3 production line. They had a requirement for a certain sensor on the battery pack. It had been there since the beginning. Everyone assumed it was necessary.\n\nMusk asked who required it. Nobody knew. It was just... required. Had always been there.\n\nWhen they traced it back, they found the original engineer had left years ago. The sensor was solving a problem that no longer existed. They removed it. Nothing broke.\n\nThis happened over and over. Requirements that existed because they'd always existed. Nobody questioning them because questioning felt disrespectful or risky.\n\n## Step two: Delete\n\nThis is Musk's favorite step apparently. He says if you're not occasionally adding things back, you're not deleting enough.\n\nHis rule: delete any part or process you can. Not \"delete what's obviously unnecessary.\" Delete everything you can. See what breaks. Add back only what's truly needed.\n\nHe said: \"If you're not adding back at least 10% of the things you deleted, you haven't deleted enough.\"\n\nAt SpaceX, they applied this to the Raptor engine. Traditional rocket engines have thousands of parts. Each part was there for a reason, supposedly. But Musk kept pushing: why does this part exist? Can we delete it?\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKX2vKcbcAARSkn.png)\n\nThey removed part after part. Combined functions. Eliminated entire systems. The Raptor ended up with dramatically fewer components than comparable engines. Simpler. Cheaper. More reliable.\n\nThe same thing happened with Tesla's radar system. For years, Tesla used radar for autopilot. It was a requirement. Everyone in the industry used radar.\n\nMusk questioned it. Do we actually need radar? What if we relied only on cameras, the way humans drive with just eyes?\n\nThey deleted radar entirely. Controversial. People said it was dangerous. But Musk's view was that if you don't delete things that seem necessary, you never find out what's actually necessary.\n\n## Step three: Simplify and optimize\n\nHere's the crucial part. This step comes third, not first.\n\nMost people start here. They try to make things more efficient. But they're simplifying a process that shouldn't exist in the first place.\n\nMusk says: \"It's very common, possibly the most common error, to optimize something that should not exist.\"\n\nThere's a story about the Tesla Model X and its falcon wing doors. The doors were incredibly complex. Tons of sensors, motors, hinges. The engineering team spent months optimizing them, making them work better.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKX3Vb5akAAp0G4.jpg)\n\nMusk later said the falcon wing doors were a mistake. They shouldn't have existed. All that optimization was wasted effort on a feature that created more problems than it solved.\n\nThe optimization felt productive. But it was productive in the wrong direction.\n\n## Step four: Accelerate cycle time\n\nOnce you've questioned, deleted, and simplified, then you can speed things up.\n\nMusk is obsessed with cycle time. How fast can you go from idea to execution to feedback?\n\nAt SpaceX, they build and test rockets faster than anyone thought possible. They blow things up intentionally. Each explosion is data. Each failure teaches something.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKX6G0pbwAACjE2.jpg)\n\nWhen Starship prototypes kept exploding, people outside the company thought it was failure. Musk saw it as rapid learning. The speed of iteration was the competitive advantage.\n\nBut notice this comes fourth. You don't speed up a bad process. You question it, delete the unnecessary parts, simplify what's left, and then accelerate.\n\nSpeed is a multiplier. If you're doing the wrong thing, speed just gets you to the wrong place faster.\n\nStep five: Automate\n\nFinally, automation. The thing everyone wants to start with.\n\nMusk says this should come last. Because automation locks things in. Once you automate a process, it's harder to change. It becomes invisible.\n\nIf you automate before questioning and deleting, you've locked in a bad process. Made it permanent.\n\nMusk learned this the hard way at Tesla. During Model 3 production, they automated everything. The factory was supposed to be this lights-out operation. Robots doing everything.\n\n![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKX6g0kaUAA2fiA.jpg)\n\nIt was a disaster. The automation was too complex. Things kept breaking. They'd automated processes that shouldn't have existed.\n\nMusk later said: \"Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. Humans are underrated.\"\n\nThey had to rip out automation and bring back human workers for many tasks. They'd done step five before properly doing steps one through four.\n\nEven Musk makes this mistake. But at least he recognizes the sequence.\n\n## Why smart people get this backwards\n\nMusk specifically warns about smart people. He says smart people are more likely to optimize things that shouldn't exist because they're good at optimization.\n\nIf you're smart, you can make almost anything work better. You can find efficiencies in bad processes. You can polish bad ideas. You can make wrong directions feel productive.\n\nThis is a trap.\n\nThe less smart approach might actually be better sometimes. Someone who can't optimize is forced to question whether the thing should exist at all. They can't make a bad process work, so they have to find a better process.\n\nIntelligence becomes a liability when it lets you avoid the hard question of whether you're working on the right thing.\n\n## What this looked like for me\n\nI didn't understand any of this when I dropped out of college in 2023.\n\nI tried everything. SEO, SEM, email marketing, copywriting. Then businesses. Dropshipping. Amazon FBA. Lost money on that one. A clothing brand. Affiliate marketing.\n\nEach time, I'd immediately start building systems. Optimizing processes. Making things efficient. That felt like what serious entrepreneurs did.\n\nI had supplier databases before I had sales. Tracking spreadsheets before I had customers. Beautiful systems for businesses that were fundamentally broken.\n\nI was skipping straight to steps three, four, and five. Optimize. Accelerate. Automate.\n\nNever did steps one and two. Never questioned whether the requirements I was following made sense for me. Never deleted the parts that weren't essential.\n\nThe shift happened when I found content. The eye for virality that eventually became my actual thing.\n\nThis time I didn't start with systems. I started with questions. Why does this post work? Why did that one fail? What's actually driving results versus what's noise?\n\nI deleted ruthlessly. All the \"best practices\" that didn't seem to matter. The posting schedules that didn't move the needle. The engagement tactics that felt forced.\n\nI simplified to the core. What's the minimum needed for content to perform? Not the maximum. The minimum.\n\nOnly then did I build systems. And by that point, I was systematizing something that actually worked. Something I understood. Something stripped down to essentials.\n\n## The question that matters\n\nThe question I ask myself now before optimizing anything: should this even exist?\n\nHave I questioned the requirements? Have I deleted everything I can?\n\nMost advice tells you to build systems. Automate. Scale.\n\nMusk's algorithm says that's the last step, not the first.\n\nMost advice tells you to follow best practices. Learn from what works.\n\nMusk's algorithm says question every requirement, especially from smart people.\n\nIt's backwards from how we usually think. And that's probably why it works.\n\nIf everyone's optimizing and automating, the advantage is in questioning and deleting. The stuff nobody wants to do. The stuff that feels like going backwards.\n\nI think about all those months I spent optimizing businesses that shouldn't have existed.\n\nIf I had questioned first. If I had deleted before building. If I had followed the steps in order.\n\nI probably would have failed faster at the wrong things and found the right things sooner.\n\nThat's the value of the algorithm. Not that it makes you successful. It makes you fail at the wrong things faster so you can find the right things.\n\nQuestion. Delete. Simplify. Accelerate. Automate.\n\nIn that order.\n\nMost people never get past step one. They never question the requirements they inherited.\n\nI'm still not great at it. But at least I know the sequence now."},"adhxContext":{"savedByCount":1,"publicTags":[],"previewUrl":"https://adhx.com/jaynitx/status/2064342452782420052"}}