You’ve probably seen the footage of Elon Musk wandering around Starbase with a microphone, looking at massive stainless steel rocket segments like they’re LEGO bricks. During a now-famous walkthrough with Everyday Astronaut, Musk dropped a knowledge bomb that has since become the "holy grail" for engineering nerds and productivity junkies alike.
He calls it "The Algorithm."
It sounds fancy. It sounds like something that requires a Ph.D. in computer science to understand. But honestly? It’s basically just a checklist for not being an idiot when you’re building stuff.
Musk developed these five steps during the "production hell" years of the Tesla Model 3 and refined them while trying to get Starship off the ground. The wildest part isn't that the steps exist; it's that almost every major corporation in the world does them in the exact opposite order.
Step 1: Make the Requirements Less Dumb
This is where everyone messes up. We usually start a project by saying, "Okay, here are the specs." But Musk argues that your requirements are definitely dumb. It doesn’t matter if they came from the CEO, a Nobel Prize winner, or the legal department. They are wrong.
The trick he uses at SpaceX and Tesla is simple: Every requirement must have a name attached to it. You can’t just say "the safety department requires this." Departments don't make requirements; people do. If you can’t find a specific person to defend a rule, the rule is deleted. Even if you do find that person, you’re supposed to tell them why their requirement might be stupid.
Musk warns that requirements from "smart people" are the most dangerous. Why? Because you’re less likely to question them. You figure, "Hey, they're a genius, they must know why we need a 0.5mm tolerance here." Most of the time, they don't. They’re just repeating something they heard in 1998.
Step 2: Delete the Part or Process
If you aren't adding things back in at least 10% of the time, you aren't deleting enough. That is a direct quote that haunts middle managers everywhere.
The bias in big companies is always to add "just in case."
- "Let’s add a sensor here just in case the temperature spikes."
- "Let’s add a cover here just in case it rains."
Before you know it, you have a car or a rocket that is overweight, over-expensive, and impossible to build. Musk’s philosophy is to strip it down until it breaks, then add back the bare minimum. A famous example is the Model 3 battery pack. They had these "fiberglass mats" for noise reduction and fire protection. Musk literally crawled into the production line to see if they were actually doing anything. They weren't. He deleted them. The car worked fine.
Step 3: Simplify and Optimize
Notice that this is step three. Not step one.
This is the most common mistake "smart" engineers make. They spend three months optimizing a part that shouldn't even exist.
Think about that for a second. Imagine you spend a million dollars making a bracket 20% lighter and 50% stronger. You’re a hero, right? No. If that bracket could have been deleted in Step 2, you just wasted a million dollars and three months of your life.
You only optimize what survives the "deletion" phase. It’s about being "less wrong," not being "perfect." Musk is obsessed with the idea that every design is wrong; the goal is just to make it less wrong over time.
Step 4: Accelerate Cycle Time
Once you’ve made the requirements less dumb, deleted the junk, and simplified the leftovers, then you go fast.
"If you're digging your grave, don't dig faster," Musk says. It’s a bit dark, but it makes sense. If you try to speed up a process that is fundamentally broken or unnecessary, you’re just failing at a higher frequency.
At Tesla, they tried to speed up the Model 3 line before they had fixed the design issues. It resulted in cars being stuck in "tents" in the parking lot for rework. You have to earn the right to go fast by completing the first three steps.
Step 5: Automate
This is the big one. This is where the Model 3 almost killed Tesla.
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In the beginning, Musk tried to "automate everything." He wanted a "dreadnought" factory where robots did everything and humans just watched. It was a disaster. The robots couldn't handle the "dumb requirements" or the "un-deleted parts."
He famously tweeted that "humans are underrated."
Automation is the final step. You only bring in the robots when the process is so simple, so lean, and so fast that a human physically can’t keep up. If you automate a mess, you just get an automated mess.
Actionable Insights for Your Own Work
You don't have to be building a Mars rocket to use this. You can apply "The Algorithm" to your morning routine, your small business, or even how you manage your inbox.
- Audit your "Rules": Look at a task you do every day. Who told you to do it that way? If it’s "just how we do things," it’s a dumb requirement.
- The 10% Rule: Try deleting a step in your workflow this week. If everything doesn't blow up, you probably didn't need it. If it does blow up, just add it back. Now you know the limit.
- Stop Polishing Dirt: Before you buy a new software tool to "optimize" your schedule, ask yourself if the meetings on that schedule even need to happen.
- Sequential Thinking: Don't try to "scale" (automate) something that you haven't simplified yet.
The reason Musk is able to launch more rockets than entire countries is because he follows this order religiously. It’s not about being the smartest person in the room; it’s about having a process that forces you to stop doing things that don't matter.