Famous lists · No. 2

Elon Musk's to-do list had five items. One was “Don't tell anyone.”

August 2006. Tesla hadn't sold a single car yet. Musk wrote a long blog post called The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me), and at the very end boiled the whole thing down to five lines. It's one of the most famous to-do lists in business. It's also, technically, a to-do list that told the entire internet to keep it quiet.

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The original

Tesla Motors blog · August 2, 2006

So, in short, the master plan is:

Build sports car
Use that money to build an affordable car
Use that money to build an even more affordable car
While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options
Don't tell anyone.

The last lines of the post, as published.

If he'd used Stipp

The master plan Tesla Motors

Build sports car

Done. The Roadster shipped in 2008.

Use that money to build an affordable car

Model S, 2012. “Affordable” is doing some heavy lifting here.

Use that money to build an even more affordable car

Model 3, 2017. Eleven years after writing it down. Still counts.

While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options

High priority

The “while you're at it” task. Every list has one. It's never the one that gets ticked off.

Don't tell anyone

Overdue since Aug 2, 2006

Posted on the company blog. Hard to tick off after that.

Why this list works

Most to-do lists are a pile. This one is a staircase. Every line pays for the next one: the expensive car funds the cheaper car, which funds the even cheaper car. You can read the whole strategy of a company in about ten seconds.

It also has a sequel habit. Ten years later, in 2016, Musk published Master Plan, Part Deux. Part 3 followed in 2023, and Part IV in 2025. When a list is done, write the next one.

And then, in 2024, Fortune noticed the original post had disappeared from Tesla's website, along with the rest of the old blog. Which is the other lesson: keep your lists somewhere they won't get deleted.

Line five

Don't tell anyone.

Here's a tip from Stippy: if a plan is secret, don't put it on your company blog. In Stipp your notes are private. Your master plan stays between you and you, the actions come out of the note and land in your list, and nobody reads it unless you show them.

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