FS | BRAIN FOOD
Sept 13th, 2026 - #698 - read online - Free Version
Welcome to Brain Food, your weekly signal in a world full of noise.
Tiny Thoughts
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Unfair advantages are found in the things that anyone could do, but very few choose to do.
**
When the gap between where you are and where you want to be is large, focus on the next step. One sentence in the book. One workout. One email. While the ultimate goal helps you navigate, focusing on it keeps you from achieving it.
***
Patterns of unhappy people:
- Need social approval
- Are reliably unreliable
- Feel sorry for themselves
- Choose comfort over truth
- Refuse to learn from others
- Spend more than they make
- Use chemicals to alter mood
- Make everything about them
- Resent the success of others
- Confuse motion with progress
- Confuse cynicism with intelligence
- Promiscuous with their attention
- Always in love with their first idea
- Are always too smart to look stupid
- Need to learn everything from mistakes
- Build a life that looks better than it feels
- Protect their potential by never testing it
- Stay loyal to decisions that no longer make sense
- Win arguments at the expense of the relationships
- Standards for others and explanations for themselves
Not a good place to be.
Insights
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Kurt Vonnegut on going backwards:
“A step backwards after making a wrong turn is a step in the right direction.”
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Andrew Carnegie on what people do:
“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”
***
Larry Ellison commenting on what made Bill Gates successful:
“Now, most people hate to admit they're wrong, but it didn't bother Bill one bit. All he cared about was what was right, not who was right. That's what makes Bill very, very dangerous.”
The Knowledge Project
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Some recent episodes you might have missed
- What 12 Years of Failure Taught Steve Jobs About Success (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)
- The Lessons Behind How To Make a Few Billion Dollars (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)
- Excellence Is the Capacity to Take Pain (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)
- How to Repair and Nourish Your Gut Microbiome (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)
- The Secret to High Performance and Excellence (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)
Etcetera
- I dug up a rare David Ogilvy interview (research, just for the nerds among you).
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Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week.
— Shane Parrish
P.S. This was eye opening.
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