04/01/2025
Elon Musk's first ex-wife, Justine Musk, offers a more personal look at what makes Musk tick.
"He would call very insistently," Justine said in Ashlee Vance's biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, as reported by CNBC in 2018. "You always knew it was Elon because the phone would never stop ringing."
Musk, who fathered five children with Justine before their divorce in 2008, has always been known for his intensity. And for her, it was impossible to miss. "I do think of him as the Terminator. He locks his gaze on to something and says, ‘It shall be mine.'"
While attending Queen's University in Canada, Justine and Musk took the same abnormal psychology class. After an exam, she scored a solid 97. Elon got a 98.
"He went back to the professor and talked his way into the two points he'd lost," Justine said, securing a perfect 100. "It felt like we were always competing."
At 17, Elon left South Africa and moved to Canada to attend Queen's University.
There, his dormmate Navaid Farooq recognized Musk's focus.
"When Elon gets into something, he develops just this different level of interest in it than other people," Farooq told Vance. One example? The hours they spent playing Civilization, a popular strategy game. "Elon could lose himself for hours on end," Farooq said. It wasn't just about winning – it was about mastery.
Farooq and Justine weren't the only ones to witness this all-consuming intensity. Musk himself admitted to it in a 2018 interview with journalist Kara Swisher. He described working 120-hour weeks to ramp up Tesla Model 3 production, saying, "Some weeks … I would just sort of sleep for a few hours, work, sleep for a few hours, work, seven days a week."