Elon Musk’s 5-step Improvement Process

The biggest mistake of smart engineers is optimizing something that should not exist

1. Make your requirements less dumb, your requirements are definitely dumb, especially is coming from a smart person, most people don’t question enough
2. Remove unnecessary process steps, try very hard to delete it. If you are not adding back in, you are not deleting enough
3. Simplify or Optimize (this is 3rd step not 1st step)
4. Accelerate cycle time, if move too slowly, go faster, don't go faster until you get the first previous steps right
5. Automate. Mistake is did it backwards

https://x.com/elon_docs/status/1845042832249094240