FS | BRAIN FOOD

April 27, 2025 - #626 - 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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The clearer you are about your priorities, the easier it is to say no.

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The quicker you want something, the easier it is to manipulate you.

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The willingness to figure things out as you go is often the only difference between those who achieve difficult things and those who never begin.

As Picasso observed, "To know what you are going to draw, you have to begin drawing."

Insights

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Peter Cundhill on finding the right fit for talent:

“You can teach a donkey to climb a tree but it's easier to hire a squirrel.”

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Thomas Mitchell on finding happiness where we are:

“People are always looking for happiness at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if happiness is not found now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it ever being found. There is a great deal more happiness around us day by day than we have the sense or the power to seek and find.”

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Roger Federer on the kind of talent you can practice:

“Yes, talent matters. I’m not going to stand here and tell you it doesn’t.

But talent has a broad definition.

Most of the time, it’s not about having a gift. It’s about having grit. In tennis, like in life, discipline is also a talent. And so is patience.

Trusting yourself is a talent. Embracing the process—loving the process—is a talent. Managing your life, managing yourself.

These can be talents, too. Some people are born with them. Everybody has to work at them.”

The Knowledge Project [Outliers]

Warren Buffett once called Henry Singleton’s approach at Teledyne “the best operating and capital deployment record in American business—bar none.”

Henry Singleton wasn’t just smart; he was relentlessly rational. When other conglomerates chased growth at any cost, Singleton abruptly stopped acquiring companies because they were too expensive. Instead, he improved the ones he already owned. When his stock got too cheap, he shocked Wall Street by buying back 90% of his company’s shares, creating billions in shareholder value. He zigged when others zagged and after 3 decades, had an astronomical 20.4% annual return to show for it.

Learn exactly how his unconventional moves turned industry logic upside down on this episode of Outliers.

+ Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Web

+ 12 Lessons I learned from Henry Singleton

+ Members can find all 56 of my highlights from Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It in the repository.

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Thanks for reading,

— Shane Parrish

P.S. AI animates children's drawings.

P.P.S. I invited both of the main candidates in the Canadian election on the podcast. While both said yes, only one managed to come on. The idea was to have better political discourse, so if you're voting in Canada on Monday and haven't made up your mind, give it a listen.

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