Has Elon Musk blocked larger chunk of time on Twitter?

Elon Musk figures as the world’s richest person in the Forbes Magazine. Already CEO of Tesla and Space X, and known as someone with the busiest working schedule, the year 2022 also saw him controlling Twitter. Available tidbits videos in the internet—some of them quoting him—suggest that he works between 80 and 100 hours a week from different locations. With such context, a very common question he is posed is regarding his time management.

Musk says that he uses time blocking method, not time management strategy. Time blocking also known as time boxing is a strategy where one reserves certain amount of time for certain task. Blocking enough time to perform all activities helps one to excel the productivity. In other word, it is following a scheduled calendar than the ‘to do’ list. Musk provides example of his scheduled format, so tight and hectic, ‘working on Space X on Monday and having a Monday night flight to work for Tesla on Tuesday and Wednesday, and having a Wednesday night flight to work back on Space X’.

Musk had been the company’s largest shareholder since January 2022 when he purchased a 9.1 per cent of the company’s stock. He was then invited to be a member of the company’s board. He offered to buy the entire company on April 14, 2022. But, various back and forth between the then Twitter board and Musk prolonged the completion of the deal, finally on October 27, 2022.

Musk has been covered thoroughly worldwide, and Nepal is no exception, especially after he took over the Twitter. The coverage has ramped up even more since his decision to charge 8$ for account verification that comes with a blue tick next to the user’s name.

However, Musk was making and breaking news among his followers as well as critics in the larger part of the world ever since he announced his claim to buy twitter. There were all sorts of speculations over whether he will actually buy the twitter or withdraw from the deal. When the deal was finally through, he tweeted, “There has been much speculation about why I bought twitter and what I think about advertising. Most of it has been wrong”.

Blaming the traditional media has fueled and catered extreme polarization in the Society. “It is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide ranges of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.” He further explained, “I didn’t do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.”

Now, as Twitter CEO, he is not only selling information but also conducting surveys by himself via twitter. For example, on Nov 20, 2022 he twitted, “You might notice small, sometimes major, improvements in speed of Twitter, will be especially significant in countries far away from USA.” He had conducted surveys in the past before his ownership asking for an edit button. The one that made headlines was, when he created a poll on November 19 asking if President Trump, who had been banned by the previous board, should be reinstated.

On November 23 he twitted, “Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” He has not only shown the result (yes-72.4 and No-27.6) but also
complied with it. In his own word, “The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week.” This tweet with more than 66k comments and 77.6k retweets invited the talk over dimensions of “free speech”.

And, on November 28, Musk twitted a screenshot with image of himself and CNN presenter that read “Elon Musk could threaten free speech on Twitter by literally allowing people to speak freely”. CNN communication team chose the Twitter as platform to clarify it further, “Such headline never appeared in CNN”. But, the comments and retweets of the meme, which was declared fake seems overflowed.

What’s more, Musk seems provoking increased engagement of public in the name of open dialogue in Twitter. His recent tweet “I meet so many people who read twitter every day, but almost never tweet. If I may beg your indulgence, please add your voice to the public dialogue” amplifies it. The rapid look over Musk’s twitter account shows that in the first half of October, most of his tweets had 2 to 5 thousands comments on an average despite one twitted on October 13 “please buy my perfume, so I can buy Twitter”. But, late November toll reached more than 80-90 thousand comments on his tweets.

Looking at the intense engagement and skyrocketed comments and retweets, it seems as if Musk has definitely blocked enough time to engage on Twitter. The varieties of his tweets do not follow a pattern. Some are based on current events, some out of his own prerogative, and some even false information. Musk has set the trend of publicly interacting on the issues, let’s hope he would have a say in this regard someday. He will provide answer as to how much time he has blocked to being informed of the subjects and to tweet on them.