FS | BRAIN FOOD
March 30, 2025 - #622 - read online - Free Version
Welcome to Brain Food, a weekly newsletter of timeless ideas and insights you can use.
Tiny Thoughts
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A focused hour outweighs an unfocused day.
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Great ideas often look wrong at first; that's why the independent-minded discover them.
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Progress doesn't come from revolutionary leaps but from the patient accumulation of small, earned advances.
Insights
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Edward Gibbon on the relationship between solitude and genius:
"Conversation enriches the understanding but solitude is the school of genius."
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Richard Feynman on passion, curiosity, and living fully:
"Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all."
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Joan Didion on fully embracing life:
"I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it."
The Knowledge Project [Outliers]
What made James Dyson a billionaire wasn't brilliance—it was being annoyed by vacuums that clog and wheelbarrows that tip. While experts insisted "better doesn't exist," he was climbing fences at midnight to prove them wrong. His story reveals how frustration, rejection, and cardboard prototypes can outwit entire industries.
+ Listen and Learn on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
++ Nine lessons you can learn from Dyson.
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Thanks for reading,
— Shane Parrish
P.S. Unfortunately, I did this the first time my parents left me home alone for a weekend.
P.P.S. Members have access to the episode with Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt now.
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