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# Elon Musk's Hobby Journey

b. 1971

CEO of Tesla and SpaceX; pushing boundaries of electric vehicles, space exploration, and AI

## Hobby Timeline

### Childhood (South Africa)

Voracious reading  Science fiction  Self-taught programming  Making rockets  Magic tricks

### Teens / Early Career

Obsessive reading (sci-fi, philosophy, biographies)  Video game development

### Peak Career

Competitive video gaming  Anime  Reading (biographies, physics, AI research)

## Surprising hobbies

- ✦  Reportedly ranked top 20 globally in Diablo IV

- ✦  Childhood explosives experiments (pool chlorine + brake fluid)

- ✦  Hypnotized his sister into believing she was a dog as a child

- ✦  Taught himself magic tricks

## How hobbies shaped their career

The sci-fi books — especially Asimov's Foundation and Hitchhiker's Guide — directly shaped his vision for SpaceX and Mars colonization. His childhood coding hobby became the foundation for his tech career. His reading habit, which he maintains to this day, is how he taught himself rocket science, famously reading engineering textbooks cover to cover to build SpaceX.

> “I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents.”
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>
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> — on his childhood reading

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> Source: https://significanthobbies.com/journeys/elon-musk