Musk’s five-step engineering method:
- Question the requirements — Should this thing even exist?
- Delete — Remove unnecessary complexity
- Simplify — Make what remains more pure
- Accelerate — Increase efficiency in the right direction
- Automate — Scale the correct process
The key is the order. If you optimize before you question, you’re just perfecting the wrong thing.
Musk says: If you’re not adding things back at least 10% of the time, you’re not deleting enough.