To say that Elon Musk’s business has been doing well would be an understatement. This spring, Tesla grew 71% from last year and was valued at $1 trillion. SpaceX is valued at $100 billion and will launch twice as many satellites into orbit by mass in the first quarter of 2022 as any other company or country combined.
But, as noted biographer and history professor Walter Isaacson puts it in a new biography of the tech giant released Tuesday by Simon & Schuster, “it’s not in Musk’s nature to leave himself alone.”
“Part of my default settings”
In his latest book, Simply Named “Elon Musk” Isaacson observed that the billionaire businessman continued to take risks. Those closest to Musk say he craves high-tension environments — Isaacson recalled Musk once saying, “I want to go on adventures. I don’t want to taste anything.” Isaacson noted that even in After achieving a major business success, Musk also prepares himself for the next thing to avoid feeling idle.
In a conversation Isaacson observed, Shivon Zilis — a venture capitalist and mother of Musk’s two children — told the business expert, “You don’t have to be at war all the time. state. … Or do you feel more comforted when you are in a time of war?”
“It’s part of my default setting,” he told her.
“It’s like he won a mock competition and now he’s overwhelmed,” Zillis told Isaacson. “The long lull was unsettling to him.”
In October, the world’s richest man bought Twitter despite warnings from his family. “I guess I’ve always wanted to put my chips back on the table, or play the next level of the game,” Musk told Isaacson. “I’m not good at sitting down.”
Is risk-taking addictive?
Simply put, risk-taking refers to engaging in a behavior where the outcome is uncertain, and the impact of this behavior can reflect addiction.
Gideon Naff, associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said the brain’s response to unexpected rewards is heightened when it releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure. His research focuses on adventure science.
“It turns out that dopamine is released not when we experience the reward itself, but when we experience a greater reward than we expected,” he told us. wealth.
Taking gambling as an example, it has the potential to become a behavioral addiction because Chance The feeling of winning a lot of money is more pleasant than seeing a regular paycheck rolling in. Addiction occurs when people have a compulsive urge to engage in a behavior regardless of harmful consequences. Accompanying the obsessive-compulsive response is a desire to feel good or avoid discomfort, according to Harvard Health.
“If you get an unexpected reward, your dopamine kicks in and it feels really good, which also causes you to take more risks,” Neff said. “We know that unexpected rewards are more likely to be habit-forming and lead to dopamine release.”
Neff said Musk’s penchant for constantly seeking the next business goal could be interpreted as an addiction to risky behavior.
“[If you]invest in a company that only has a 10 percent chance of success, and it ends up being successful, that’s a massive source of dopamine,” he said. He noted that people like Musk rely on finding new sources of stimulation — —Even if they are already successful at what they do.
As with any addiction, there are many ways to break it, including finding a network of people who can support you in changing your behavior and seeking professional help. There may also be medications that can help ease this process.
Whether due to genetics, environment, or a combination of factors, people are addicted to risk-taking—and not surprisingly, they also flock to uncertain entrepreneurial environments.
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