Why is Musk never afraid of messing up? When others asked him this question, he laid it all out on the spot. Unless it's catastrophic, failure is meaningless. Many people go crazy when their projects hit a snag. Musk doesn't waste emotions on that at all. Everyone has the same amount of time on their hands. What you need to do is simply pursue the maximization of "net effective output." As long as the result of all actions combined is profitable, that's all that matters. He directly used baseball rules as an example. In a game, no one will wait for that perfect slow pitch with you. If you wait too long, you only get three chances to swing. Three strikes and you're out, and it's time to switch players. The only thing that counts on the field is your overall batting average. The operational logic of most large companies is exactly the opposite. Management always punishes every small failure instead of rewarding the final net output. This directly leads to everyone pretending they haven't made mistakes. As long as you haven't been completely knocked off the table. The huge gains from a single success can fill all the holes. Those painful trial-and-error costs are hardly worth mentioning in the overall ledger.