Elon Musk recently invested into a tiny house and this might be just what the world needs right now as an example. A prefab tiny house worth $50.000 was brought to the SpaceX facilities so that Elon can have a place to rest whenever he needs.
We can always count on Elon to put things into a new perspective. Since we’ve been seeing more and more people working from home in the last two years, Musk’s move of planting a tiny house in his work facilities has turned the “home office” perspective on its head: instead of bringing the office to the home, he brought the home to the office.
The world’s second richest man is a genious and he keeps proving this with his choices that just make sense – maybe not in the way we’re used to and that is also a good thing.
We know that Elon Musk started his professional life by sleeping on a couch in his rented office out of two reasons: he would work most waking hours and he didn’t have a budget to rent an apartment.
Since those early days, clearly Elon has been thinking in a different way than most of people and this new move – from home to office home – is more proof that he thinks a lot different than the rest and makes decisions based on first principles thinking. It’s not about he can afford, it’s about how he thinks about his possesions.
His tiny house is a Boxabl Casita, a prefab tiny home set up like a studio apartment. Equipped with a living space, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, Elon’s tiny home is the place he will use even after all his possesion will be sold. Musk tweeted that he was “selling almost all physical possessions” and “will own no house.”
Now living in a $50,000 prefab home in Texas that he rents from his company SpaceX, Elon chose to split his time between the 400 square foot tiny house and his offices, since he’s mostly working during waking hours. This flat-packed home is highly energy-efficient and resistant to strong winds, floods and fires. It comes with a full-size refrigerator, a stove, a dishwasher and a washer/dryer.
We know that Elon Musk has said a few times that he used to sleep in the office and this new move shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But we’re always surprised by Elon’s choices and this can be clearly seen in the way that his mind differs from most of us. His Boxable Casita tiny home is made out of steel, concrete and EPS foam, materials chosen to be durable, flood-resistant, fire-resistant and rated for hurricane-strength winds.
Elon Musk’s choices are mostly based on first principles thinking and we can see that this also mirrors in the choices of buying a tiny house. What makes more sense than living where you work, if you’re almost always working?
Now this is how you turn home office work on its head – you don’t bring the office setup to the house, you bring the house to the office setup.
Elon’s prefab house is one way of combining home and office life. We’ve talked before about using garden pods to create a separate home office space, but Elon Musk has really turned this idea around. For the rest of us, garden pods and tiny home offices can look like this:
