How Elon Musk schedules a typical week

Elon Musk is driven by a desire to achieve nothing less than saving the human race from destroying itself.

He's aware that some people find the scale of his ambitions grandiose, but the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla has structured his life around achieving goals like landing humans on Mars.

"The life that Musk has created to manage all of these endeavours is preposterous," Ashlee Vance writes in his upcoming biography "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future."

Vance spoke with Musk to determine what an ordinary week looks like for the billionaire entrepreneur:

• Sunday: Travel if necessary. Spend time at Bel Air mansion.
• Monday: Work at SpaceX in Hawthorne. Take private jet to Silicon Valley. Crash at a friend's place.
• Tuesday: Work at Tesla's offices in Palo Alto and/or factory in Fremont.
• Wednesday: Work at Tesla's offices in Palo Alto and/or factory in Fremont.
• Thursday: Fly back to Los Angeles. Work at SpaceX.
• Friday: Work at SpaceX.
• Saturday: Work at SpaceX and/or spend time with five young sons he shares custody with first wife Justine (has them four days each week).

This is just a framework that Musk builds off, and doesn't factor in a host of other variables.

Vance recounts a particularly busy week for Musk, which also included coming off a weekend camping trip with his sons to a round of morning talk shows in New York on Monday, a visit with President Barack Obama on Tuesday night, and then attending a weekend conference in Yellowstone hosted by Google chairman Eric Schmidt.

Vance reports that in 2013, Musk flew 185 times.

"Asked how he survives this schedule," Vance writes, "Musk said, 'I had a tough childhood, so maybe that was helpful.'"