Elon Musk says he is now working 24/7: "I have too much work on my plate"
It's been less than three weeks since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, but the workload already seems to be taking a toll on him. Speaking at Indonesia's B20 conference on Monday, the Tesla CEO said that he is now working 24/7 and has "too much" going on.
"If I were you, I would jump on a plane and fly to Bali and hide a little or relax. Why don't you do that?" moderator Anindya Bakrie, the CEO and President Director of Bakrie & Brothers, a manufacturing and infrastructure corporation, asked Musk at the conference on Monday. B20 is the "official G20 dialogue forum with the global business community," according to its website, as G20 member nations gather at a summit nearby.
Musk laughed, saying "that sounds fantastic, but my workload has recently increased quite a lot."
"I have too much work on my plate, that is for sure," he said.
Musk's work appears to be nonstop since he acquired Twitter on October 27. From mass layoffs to the start – and quick end – of a verified subscription service, the social media giant has seen large and frequent changes in recent weeks.
"Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months," Musk tweeted last week. "We will keep what works and change what doesn't."
Bakrie continued to ask Musk about how he handles global shifts, to which Musk responded: "With great difficulty."
"I'm really working at the absolute most amount that I can work, from morning 'til night, seven days a week," he said.
With only his face illuminated over a video call as the power had gone out in his location, Musk added that "this is not something I recommend, frankly. I don't know what else to say."
An overloaded work week is nothing new to Musk. Along with being the CEO Of Twitter, the father of 10 is also the co-founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the co-founder of The Boring Company. In 2018, he seemed to reference Arianna Huffington's request for him pull back on his workload, tweeting, "You think this is an option. It is not."
Even at that time, Musk told The New York Times he was overwhelmed and working up to 120 hours a week – which could equate to 17 hour days, seven days a week.
That same year, he told CBS Mornings' Gayle King that he had been sleeping on a Tesla factory floor as the company struggled to meet its production goals.
"I don''t have time to go home and shower," he told King. "...I don't believe like people should be experiencing hardship while the CEO is like off on vacation."