To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That's what got me into software engineering when I was... — Elon Musk

To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That's what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games - nothing like saving the world.

Author: Elon Musk

Insight: There's something refreshingly honest here that cuts through all the mythology we build around ambitious people. We're trained to believe that world-changers are motivated by grand visions of saving humanity, but this admission suggests something messier and more relatable: the best work often starts from pure, self-interested desire. Musk wanted a better computer for games. That wasn't noble. It was just what he wanted. The real insight is that this kind of honest wanting—not prettified into a mission statement—might actually be what drives people to get genuinely good at things. He didn't aim to revolutionize software; he aimed to play better games. But that specific hunger forced him to learn, to problem-solve, to push against his limits. Somewhere in that grind, real skill developed. And real skill is the actual prerequisite for doing anything significant, whether that's building a better game or building rockets. There's also a quiet rebellion in this. We live in an era obsessed with purpose and meaning, where everyone's supposed to want to change the world. But maybe the people who change things most aren't the ones performing virtue—they're the ones too focused on what they actually want to worry about how it looks.

Source: Interview, Recode Decode podcast with Kara Swisher, 2018