Isaacson spends considerable time on Musk’s childhood in Pretoria, South Africa. The book describes severe bullying at school and a difficult relationship with his father, Errol Musk. These experiences are presented as important background for understanding Musk’s later relationship with pressure, confrontation, and risk. The Washington Post similarly described Isaacson’s biography as a character study that connects Musk’s childhood experiences with his later behavior. 

Musk also found an escape in books, science fiction, computing, and games. His interest in technology and space developed early, eventually becoming connected to his ambition for humanity to become a multiplanetary species. While Musk’s story highlights extreme ambition and execution, Atomic Habits takes a very different approach by focusing on small behaviors and systems that compound over time.

The useful takeaway isn’t that a difficult childhood automatically creates extraordinary achievement. Rather, Isaacson explores how Musk’s experiences became part of the story he tells about himself and the way he approaches difficult problems.