Elon Musk added to his work portfolio late final yr, when he acquired Twitter for $44 billion and appointed himself CEO. Whereas he lately introduced a successor for that function, the job is presently nonetheless his, and he stays the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

He talked about making an attempt to handle his schedule in an interview on Tuesday on the The Wall Road Journal’s CEO Council Summit.

“My days are very lengthy and sophisticated as you may think,” Musk mentioned. “And there is quite a lot of context switching,” he mentioned, emphasizing that “switching context is is sort of painful.”

Musk mentioned he typically tries to divide his schedule “so it is predominantly one firm on at some point.”

However that is not all the time attainable. This Tuesday was “a Tesla day,” he mentioned, however he “may find yourself at Twitter late tonight, after which tomorrow could be partly a Tesla day as effectively, half Twitter after which Thursday could be type of a half-SpaceX, half-Tesla day.”

He described his jobs as “considerably intertwined,” and mentioned “the time administration is extraordinarily tough.”

The complexity hasn’t been good for his investments. Tesla shares misplaced greater than half their worth within the two months after the Twitter deal closed final yr, on concern that Musk would have much less time to give attention to the electrical automobile maker even because the market was getting extra aggressive. In the meantime, advertisers fled or quickly suspended their campaigns on Twitter, and in March Musk marked down the worth of the corporate to $20 billion. Musk mentioned on Tuesday that many advertisers are coming again.

Whereas different executives might outsource their calendar to a chief of workers or govt assistant, Musk mentioned he does most of his scheduling on his personal. He mentioned he has “one part-time assistant” to assist him handle his work schedule, a proven fact that was corroborated by a former Tesla worker.

“It is unimaginable for another person to know what the priorities are,” Musk mentioned, including that he’s normally working most hours of the day, wrapping up at 2 a.m., his typical bedtime.

At Twitter, Musk now plans to shift into the function of govt chairman and expertise chief, with former NBC advert govt Linda Yaccarino slated to turn out to be CEO.

Nonetheless, Twitter is primarily a expertise firm, so his ongoing job as CTO will doubtless be demanding.

Thorold Barker, The Wall Road Journal’s editor for Europe, Center East and Africa, requested Musk if he has a succession plan in place at his companies.

“Succession is likely one of the hardest, age-old issues,” Musk mentioned. “It is plagued international locations, kings, prime ministers and presidents, and CEOs for the reason that daybreak of historical past.”

Musk mentioned he is instructed his boards, “in all instances,” who’s his option to take over in a “worst-case state of affairs.” He emphasised the businesses’ boards may additionally go in one other path so far as who ought to step into his sneakers.

At Tesla, there’s been hypothesis that finance chief Zachary Kirkhorn is amongst candidates who Musk would endorse as a successor.

As CNBC beforehand reported, Musk’s firms ceaselessly have interaction in associated occasion transactions, and he is confronted political strain to extra cleanly separate them.

After Musk took over Twitter, for instance, he licensed dozens of workers from Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Co. to assist him on the social media enterprise. The “transition crew” he established at Twitter was concerned in every part from code overview to personnel and facilities-related choices.

Musk was additionally a co-founding director and donor to OpenAI, a former non-profit that is now backed by Microsoft. Monetary filings from 2017 for OpenAI reveal that Musk donated round $250,000 price of Tesla automobiles as a part of his tens of millions of {dollars} price of donations to OpenAI again in its earlier days.

Of late, Musk has been brazenly attacking OpenAI’s company construction and the quantity of possession it is bought to Microsoft. On Tuesday, Musk talked some about X.ai, a competitor he needs to develop with a view to problem OpenAI, and Google’s DeepMind.

“I do not wish to leap the gun right here on bulletins,” Musk mentioned. “However OpenAI has a relationship with Microsoft that appears to work pretty effectively, and it is attainable that X.ai and Twitter and Tesla would have one thing related.”

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