Elon Musk Says The Reason He Went 'Bonkers' Online Was Because Of Working 120 Hours A Week

Elon Musk has made a name for himself as a successful entrepreneur, a visionary, and a forward thinker. Unfortunately, he's also built a reputation for being impulsive, erratic, and downright arrogant. And he blames that on his ridiculous work schedule.

In an interview with Recode's Kara Swisher at Tesla's Palo Alto headquarters, Elon Musk explained that his work hours may be responsible for his strange behaviour on Twitter. "You're gonna go a little bonkers if you work 120 hours a week," he said.

"There were times when, some weeks ... I haven't counted exactly, but I would just sort of sleep for a few hours, work, sleep for a few hours, work, seven days a week. Some of those days must have been 120 hours or something nutty."

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Musk said he's now reduced his time at the office to about 80 or 90 hours a week, what he called "pretty manageable". Of course, that's by no means healthy, though he insists it's sustainable for him. He said that any more that would dramatically increase his suffering. "The pain level for hours increases exponentially," he clarified. "It's like nonlinear above 80."

In addition, Musk says overworking himself so much for so long is what caused some of his recent controversial behaviour on Twitter. However, that admission only extended to calling questions from Wall Street analysts "boring and boneheaded". No word yet on whether other antics, like calling a rescue diver a pedophile, also qualify.

"Obviously I think there's really no excuse for bad manners and I was violating my own rule in that regard," Musk said. "There are reasons for it, I got no sleep, 120 hour weeks, but nonetheless, there is still no excuse, so my apologies for not being polite on the prior (investors) call."

Musk said he was working himself into the ground at the time to get Tesla to ramp up production on the Model 3, something he says was much harder as a startup than an entrenched automobile brand.

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"Pretty sure I burnt out a bunch of neurons during this process," the Tesla CEO said. "Running both SpaceX and Tesla is incredibly difficult. This year felt like five years of aging, frankly. The worst year of my entire career. Insanely painful."