Elon Musk: The Man “Raised By Books”

When Elon Musk was a kid, his parents were often away working. As he told Rolling Stone magazine, this meant he spent a lot of time on his own.

“I was off making explosives and reading books and building rockets and doing things that could have gotten me killed. I’m shocked that I have all my fingers. I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents.”Elon Musk“I was off making explosives and reading books and building rockets and doing things that could have gotten me killed. I’m shocked that I have all my fingers. I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents.” – Elon Musk

Whenever Musk wanted to learn something new, he turned to books for the answers. He was inspired by Hari Seldon, the protagonist from Isaac Asimov’s legendary sci-fi series, Foundation.

“The lesson I drew from that is you should try to take the set of actions that are likely to prolong civilization, minimize the probability of a dark age, and reduce the length of a dark age if there is one.”Elon Musk

From electric vehicles to sustainable energy to artificial intelligence to planetary colonization, Musk clearly took that lesson to heart.

Fiction provided him with inspiration, but it was nonfiction that gave him his education. And there’s a lesson that the rest of us can take from Musk. As humans, we’re naturally curious and progress-oriented with an astounding capacity to learn and grow. All we need to take advantage of those innate abilities is to make like Musk and treat books as our parents, our teachers, and our mentors.

Books provide us with unique access to the thoughts and ideas of our planet’s greatest minds, from the new and cutting-edge to time-honored wisdom. This ability to pass on learned knowledge and to build upon it is what gives humanity its advantage. And it’s what gives people like Musk the power to dream up new realities for the future of our civilization.

But you don’t have to want to change the Earth — or colonize Mars — to get the most from books. No matter what you want to learn, how you want to grow, or where you want to go, books contain all you need to know. They’ll also teach you how to apply new ideas to your own life and to develop them in whatever way works for you. Whether you want to get better at your job, or nurture better relationships, or learn more about how society works, you can bet there’s a book for that!

But there are so many great books out there, and so little time. How do you know which ones to read?

If you find the idea of the massive array of great nonfiction books a bit intimidating, or don’t know where you should start, it’s a good idea to get a tool that can help you.

One such tool is the Blinkist app, which provides summaries of key insights to over 2,500 nonfiction books. You can get the gist of a title — in either text or audio — in 15 minutes or fewer. There are over 2,500 titles in the app, with more added every week, so you know that there’ll always be something new to learn.

For Musk, his relationship with books started young, but even if you’re not much of a reader, it’s never too late to pick up a learning habit. These distilled versions of powerful nonfiction books provide actionable insights to make sure you can get the most out of them. They’re also written in a scientifically-developed way that makes them easier to retain and apply.

So, whether you want to decide which books you want to read in full, or just get an overview of bestsellers, the Blinkist app gives you the knowledge you need.

There is no substitute for the pleasure and potential of reading a title in full, but Blinkist can be the bridge that gets you there. To make nonfiction titles your mentors, download the Blinkist app today and see what you can discover!