Let's start off by talking about Elon Musk because that's what gets the attention of business and tech folk these days.
“So obviously you saw the chart there…”
At Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Elon was broadcasting his LA-based reveal of the new Tesla Powerwall and Solar Roof. I was accompanying some friends who worked at Telsa in a large atrium where we watched the launch over a massive video chat screen. (Below is the video from that day, clearly not in real time.)
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“It’s obviously a three-part solution…” Elon continued, “Yeah, obvious three-part solution. It’s really not that complicated.”
Product launch aside, Elon Musk is famous for seeing what’s obvious when the rest of us just don’t. In Neil Strauss’s detailed Rolling Stone cover story on Musk, Elon admits this outright:
"I'm naturally good at engineering. What’s very difficult for others is easy for me. For a while, I thought things were so obvious that everyone must know this... like how the wiring in a house works. And a circuit breaker, and alternating current and direct current, what amps and volts were, how to mix a fuel and oxidizers to create an explosive. I thought everyone knew this."
As it turns out, not everyone knows this.
Behind the scenes, Elon uses the same catchphrase of things being “obvious” with relative frequency. Through friends who work at Tesla and through the grapevine, I’ve gotten to hear about how Elon conducts himself in meetings at his companies. He’ll make a seemingly impossible demand of a rocket launch, stating that it’s an obvious solution. He’ll push for unrealistic timelines that are “so obvious.” Complex concepts that are really not all that obvious to everyone else are just obvious to him. He is brilliant. (Obviously.)
But brilliant as he is, there are areas of life where things are not as obvious to Elon Musk. To infer some more examples of what may be less obvious to Elon’s mind, I'd recommend checking out Neil Strauss's extended detailed profile on him (except check it out on Steemit because it's a longer cut of the original print article and it's better.) As one example, he has a rather turbulent personal life through which he is continuing to learn and grow in ways that may feel "obvious" to others.
Which brings us to some good news: everyone can be an Elon Musk, just probably not in the fields where the real Elon reigns supreme. The truth is, every person has things that are "obvious" to them that just aren't as obvious to other people. Elon found his “obvious” things and clearly is doing outlandishly well in them – engineering, inventing, visioning the future, and building cutting edge companies that actually produce tangible products. Because he doubled down on what’s obvious to him, Elon has become the real deal.
What's obvious to you?
So what areas of life are obvious to you? What skills and strengths are obvious? What knowledge, fields, and topics are obvious? Because they’re definitely not obvious to everyone else.
Unfortunately, you might not even realize what’s obvious to you because you’re probably assuming “If XYZ is obvious to me, it must be obvious to everyone else!” Like Elon, you might think “everyone knows this” or “everyone already knows how to do this” when in reality, you have a skill that most others don’t. For example, if you’re a talented programmer, coding might feel so natural to you that you don’t think your aptitude is anything special. If you’re brilliant at putting together events (whether at work or with friends), you might write off the skill until there’s no one planning the events anymore and everybody gets sad.
The other problem with that-which-is-obvious-to-us-but-not-others is that we tend to take those areas of life for granted. As a result, we may end up unnecessarily trying to compensate by working on the areas of our life that are not as obvious. For instance, the analytical mastermind may spend too much time overcompensating with networking activities, or the person who has the amazing magnetic interpersonal skills might try to dive neck deep into data analysis at work. It’s certainly important to learn and stretch outside of our comfort zone, and we don't want to be totally remedial in any given skill that is required in our workplaces. But we also don't want to spend too much time outside of our genius zone or we’ll waste our gifts and get drained.
We may even assume that because a certain set of understanding is obvious to us that we must do the “less obvious” things in order to prove our overall worth. A great example of this is the experience of Bozoma “Boz” St. John (via Tim Ferriss’s podcast) where she talks about some of her early career decisions:
“I was doing really well with Spike [Lee], got promoted a few times [at his firm], and was looking around. What he was doing was consumer engagement and pop culture marketing, and what I felt was: ‘This is easy to me, I can do this. I need something that will make people pay attention to me and know that I’m smart. So I’m going to go sign up for some pharmaceutical advertising job because that’s hard.’ I lasted three months there. That led me to understand that of course I’m capable. If I didn’t push myself, I wouldn’t have made the jump that ‘I’m smart enough to do this, but this isn’t what I want to do. I want to get back to the things that I do know how to do and make them even better.’”
We are responsible for sharing the things that are obvious to us because those are our gifts. Like Boz, the very areas where things are obvious are where we should double down, learn a lot, and push ourselves to make something obvious into something that’s much better.
To figure out what is obvious to you, you have to look for clues in your life. Of all of your skills throughout your entire life - both at work and at home - what is it that you consistently get positive feedback on? What are you naturally drawn to, and what do people ask you for your opinion about?
Back at Tesla’s headquarters...
Elon was explaining how the new Tesla solar roof would work. The set of tiles would not only efficiently generate power for a house during the day, but also look beautiful in the process. As per his typical product launch style, the rest of the show continued in a spectacle. It was a great product that he had imagined and brought to life.
It didn’t matter that Elon was stammering through the broadcasted product launch. Elon’s level of product and engineering genius grants him an odd charisma where he is permitted to speak in imperfect sentences and coyly smile when he loses his words a little bit. For most other business leaders, a lack of polished public speaking skills would be a death sentence. But Elon’s product and engineering prowess spoke for itself.
It was obvious.
Tell me in the comments what's obvious to you that may not be so obvious to other people.
Resteem and upvote this post because it means the world to me when you do!
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