Brain Food: Short and Sweet
FS | BRAIN FOOD
August 30th, 2026 - #696 - read online - Free Version
Welcome to Brain Food, your weekly signal in a world full of noise.
Tiny Thoughts
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Discipline can get you through bad days, but if it's getting you through months, you're going to burn out.
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Never be worried. Be concerned.
When you're concerned, you can do something about it. Worry is something you do when you've already decided you're helpless.
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Best practices guarantee average performance. They are literally the prescriptions of others that limit variation and get you to a baseline of performance. Following them virtually ensures that you will be working harder and harder just to "keep up." To be the best, you have to do things that no one can prescribe.
Insights
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Roy Thomson, whom I am studying for a future episode of Outliers:
“No newspaper can have editorial integrity unless it is making money.”
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Matty Fusaro on distraction:
“The world is not designed to give you a good life. It's designed to distract you from building one.”
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Roy Baumeister on Evil:
“Evil usually enters the world unrecognized by the people who open the door and let it in. Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil. Evil exists primarily in the eye of the beholder, especially in the eye of the victim.”
Etcetera
- I'm really enjoying The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr.
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Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week.
— Shane Parrish
P.S. A rollercoaster for a fish.
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