Elon Musk is known for his outlandish remarks. Be it on his social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), or statements he has made in person, the SpaceX founder and supposed head of DOGE has a history of saying absurd things. But if there’s one statement that tops the list, it’s that time that Musk said, “Vacations will kill you.”
Yes, you read that right, Elon Musk once said, “Vacations will kill you.” But what made the tech mogul conclude that holidays are bad? Read on to find out!
In September 2000, Elon Musk took a vacation with his then-newly-wed wife Justine Wilson on a honeymoon to Sydney, Australia. He was the CEO of X.com at the time. To the uninformed, X.com would eventually become PayPal, the company that eBay would eventually purchase for $1.5 billion. That being said, while Musk was on the plane to Sydney, company executives, who weren’t pleased with his leadership, issued a letter of no-confidence to the board, replacing him with Peter Thiel.
View this post on Instagram
Upon landing in Sydney, Elon Musk took the next flight out to Palo Alto, completely scrapping his honeymoon with Justine. The couple then planned a two-week trip to Brazil and South Africa that December, and this trip almost killed Musk, thus making him believe that vacations are a threat to his life.
Musk, while in South Africa, came down with the most severe form of malaria, and in his own words, “came very close to dying,” after being misdiagnosed by 2 hospitals. Writing about the sour experience in the book Elon Musk, he revealed that despite being saved at the nick of time, he had learned an invaluable lesson, writing, “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation. Vacations will kill you.”
Speaking about the vacation scarcity in his life, Elon Musk in a 2015 appearance on Danish television, said, “In the last 12 years, I only tried to take a week off twice. The first time I took a week off, the Orbital Sciences rocket exploded and Richard Branson’s (Virgin Galactic) rocket exploded that same week. The second time I took a week off, my rocket exploded.”
View this post on Instagram
He added, “The lesson here is, don’t take a week off.”
Elon Musk frowns on vacationing also because he doesn’t really have the time for it. During a conversation with Gayle King on CBS This Morning, Musk, who has a 100-hour work week, said, “I don’t have time to go home and shower. I don’t believe people should be experiencing hardship while the CEO is, like, off on vacation.”
