Elon Musk is burnt out. He has been working for 120 hours a week, he told The New York Times in a deeply personal and occasionally alarming interview. He has not taken a week off since 2001, when he contracted malaria. Work forced him to miss celebrating his own birthday and his brother’s wedding. His friends are worried about him and he has trouble sleeping. He is obsessed with his enemies, the traders short-selling his electric car company Tesla, who have caused him “extreme torture.”

Musk’s online persona—a kind of swaggering nerd king, a subreddit come to life—is all about punching back at his critics. But in the Times interview he comes across as damaged, at the end of his rope, unsure if he can continue at the grueling pace he has set for himself, not only micromanaging Tesla through serious growing pains, but also running three other companies simultaneously. “This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career. It was excruciating,” Musk told the Times. “I thought the worst of it was over—I thought it was. The worst is over from a Tesla operational standpoint.” He continued: “But from a personal pain standpoint, the worst is yet to come.”



Musk’s erratic behavior has cost Tesla periodic dips in market value, though investors’ faith in the company has always led to a subsequent rebound. (Tesla’s stock fell sharply once again in response his interview with the Times.) But the interview raises serious questions about whether the tech billionaire is able to run a $50 billion company whose value is largely predicated on the vision of its idiosyncratic owner.



Tesla has come under scrutiny in recent months, thanks to its negative cash flow, production problems, and high-profile crashes of its semi-autonomous cars. Musk has been very open about how stressful it has all been. He has taken to sleeping in the factory producing Tesla’s Model 3 in an effort to boost production. Nervous about profitability, he laid off 9 percent of the company’s workforce in June. These moves calmed investors, who bought his argument that the company was headed toward smoother seas. But now we know that Musk’s attempt to be an all-encompassing CEO, an executive involved with every aspect of his business, is causing serious personal and professional problems.



The sense that Musk may be losing it is most apparent in the public statements he has made over Twitter. Musk has spouted off about the free press, called a diver who helped rescue a trapped Thai soccer team a “pedo,” and, most dramatically, invited scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission by tweeting that he had secured funding to take Tesla private, even though he had not. Musk told the Times that he does not regret the tweet about taking the company private, but it is likely to cause problems for him and the company, since many legal experts believe that he committed securities fraud. In all likelihood, he will simply have to pay a fine, but the damage done to his reputation may cost him more.

