How they do it:

1) They don't actually spend much time on any one thing per week, on average.

2) Many of the things that count as "work" for them, at their level, are more fun—and even recuperatory—than, say, wrangling spreadsheets at your desk and attending dull-ass compulsory meetings for no reason all day. (put another way: when you have enough money, everything you do is kinda an optional hobby and not something you have to do even if you hate it)

3) They can pay to not have to worry about 90+% of the non-work shit the peons have to. Laundry? Making appointments? Arguing with insurance? Making high-quality, tasty meals? Shopping for the ingredients for those meals? Driving yourself and others places? All strictly optional. That's 10-30 hours of soul-draining bullshit per week just gone (and you can keep any of the parts that you don't find soul-draining—cook, but never have to shop for ingredients, for instance)

Telling other people to do things doesn't take that much time.

I beg to differ. Especially if you care about outcomes.

I find that is not the case. At least if one cares about the outcome. Ever fight feeling that it would be faster to just do it one’s self?

There’s lots of skill involved in finding effective people, developing trust, communicating goals clearly, evaluating outcomes, adjusting.

That skill can also be delegated away, you just need to trust the person or team doing the hiring. Delegation is one of the most scalable processes precisely because it is recursive.

If it was so easy, most companies would succeed.

I mean most CEOs make ridiculous money, so they succeeded.

On the contrary - not telling other people to do things doesn't take that much time. Especially with SpaceX, if you have a team in place you trust, you don't have to even think about telling them what to do. They present a plan you can accept or push back on.

It doesn't take much time to be the front-man to several organizations. And Musk excels at it. Being the public face of an excelling team that you assembled is a rare skillset (at the level Musk operates).

Creating the institution and framework to even put the people together in a room is the hard part.