FS | BRAIN FOOD
October 5, 2025 - #649 - read online - Free Version
Welcome to Brain Food, your weekly signal in a world full of noise.
Tiny Thoughts
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Your primary job is time allocation.
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Nothing is permanent. Some things are just renewed faster than they decay.
We want the naturally perfect relationship, but the ones that endure are renewed each morning.
Here's the paradox: fragility plus daily care outlasts strength plus neglect. The cast-iron pan seasoned daily outlives the new nonstick. The handwritten menu, which changes daily, outlasts the laminated one.
You can only optimize so much, but you can care forever. Efficiency has limits, devotion doesn't.
***
Complexity increases because adding is easy and removing is dangerous.
Whenever there's a problem, we add: a new person, requirement, or process. We never subtract.
Why?
Because everything that already exists has a champion. That clause in the tax code, that step in the process, that feature in the product ... someone fought for it, and they'll fight you if you try to remove it.
So we become professional complexity managers. Entire careers are built managing unnecessary mass. But this is the opportunity. While everyone else adds mass to the system, removing it creates an unfair advantage. The lighter you are, the faster you move.
Removing what shouldn't exist creates more value than any addition could.
Insights
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Actor Jim Carrey on living life with no regrets:
"You can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love?"
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Author Nassim Taleb on why earned knowledge and being in the details is superior:
"The knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something self-serving institutions have been very busy hiding from us."
***
Programmer Ward Cunningham on reducing the cost of mistakes when making decisions:
"I can't tell you how much time is spent worrying about decisions that don't matter. To just be able to make a decision and see what happens is tremendously empowering, but that means you have to set up the situation such that when something does go wrong, you can fix it. When something does go wrong, it doesn't cost you or your customer an exorbitant amount. It isn't ridiculously expensive. When you get in situations where you cannot afford to make a mistake, it's very hard to do the right thing. So if you're trying to do the right thing, the right thing might be to eliminate the cost of making a mistake rather than try to guess what's right."
+ When I give talks all around the world on decision-making, I tell people that when the cost of failure is low, move quickly. When it's high, move slowly. There are two nuances here. First, the word cost is important and it's always changing. A low cost for one team won't necessarily be a low cost for another. Second, and perhaps more important, most high-cost decisions can be broken down into lower-cost decisions.
The Knowledge Project
My guest this week is Barry Diller, one of America's most successful businessmen.
Diller is the founder and Chairman of IAC and is best known for leading Paramount Pictures and Fox. At 83, he chose to publish a deeply personal book, opening up about his successes, failures, and the lessons he had learned.
With surprising candor in this conversation, he opens up about the deeper principles that have shaped his success.
+ Listen to the full episode on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Web/Transcript/Key Ideas | YouTube
Here are 10 of the maxims I took away from this episode and my research
1. No job is below you.
2. Conflict is better than consensus.
3. Conventional wisdom is uninteresting.
4. Don't treat your job as a stepping stone.
5. To get the job you want, master the one you have.
6. If you don't get what you want, be prepared to walk away.
7. "The world belongs to the discontented." - Robert Woodruff
8. Make all decisions from a place of optimism, not pessimism.
9. "Data can tell you what has happened, not what can or will happen."
10. Most of the time, you don't need to ask for responsibility; you can take it.
Want to go even deeper?
+ Read the other 19 maxims here
+ 10 deeper lessons from this episode
+ While researching this episode, I highlighted 83 passages from Diller's autobiography. Members can read them here.
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Thanks for reading,
— Shane Parrish
P.S. Not AI.
P.P.S. Each year, The Knowledge Project gets millions of audio listens on the podcast and millions of video listens. Next year, we want to do even more. We're looking for a presenting sponsor. A company that wants to go on every episode, every platform, and every clip to social media. A company that aligns with our values and our audience. If you think that's you, learn more, and let's chat.
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