Brain Food: The Price of Admission

FS | BRAIN FOOD

Welcome to Brain Food, your weekly signal in a world full of noise.

Tiny Thoughts

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The longer your email, the less likely it is to be read by someone who can act on it.

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The price of admission to anything extraordinary isn't talent or capital. It's a willingness to be publicly bad at something for a while.

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If you don't know what will work, eliminate what won't.

Often what looks like correct judgment in hindsight was avoiding obvious stupidity in the moment.

Insights

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Olympian Eileen Gu on training:

“I train like I’ve never won, and I compete like I’ve never lost.”

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In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna:

“You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward…Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do.”

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Michael Bloomberg on small steps:

"Predicting the future’s impossible. You work hard because it increases the odds. But there’s no guarantee; much is dependent on what cards happen to get dealt. I have always believed in playing as many hands as possible, as intelligently as I can, and taking the best of what comes my way. Every significant advance I or my company has ever made has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary: small earned steps—not big lucky hits.”

The Knowledge Project

The Knowledge Project is one of the top business podcasts in the world.

The central idea is to "Master the best of what other people have already figured out."

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Etcetera

• Tobi was spot on.
• The 3 F's of following up.
• While researching David Ogilvy for an upcoming episode of Outliers, I was surprised to learn this was the most successful ad he ever wrote.

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Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week.

— Shane Parrish

P.S. A 1979 video of a true craftsman.

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