FS | BRAIN FOOD
April 19th, 2026 - #677 - read online - Free Version
Welcome to Brain Food, your weekly signal in a world full of noise.
Tiny Thoughts
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The people doing the work often don't have time to answer those watching.
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Nothing great was ever built by someone who had to be talked into building it.
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Mindset is the first thing that matters and the last thing anyone works on.
The person who approaches a problem like an opportunity has an advantage that the person who sees an obstacle will never understand.
Sooner or later people realize that everything comes down to mindset.
Insights
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Greek philosopher Heraclitus on how nothing is the same:
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
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Monk Swami Vivekananda on focus:
“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life — think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way of success.”
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Ira Glass on beginners:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
The Knowledge Project
Mario Harik is the CEO of XPO, one of the largest logistics companies in the world.
He started as employee #3, learned from Brad Jacobs (who built eight multibillion-dollar companies from scratch), and now leads tens of thousands of employees with a management style shaped by engineering discipline, frontline feedback, and a deep belief in human potential. Mario shares how he uses real-time data and second-order thinking to make decisions, how he hires and develops A players (and the gut test that tells you who isn’t one), how he runs meetings that surface the best thinking from the most junior person in the room, and why ego, complacency, and small goals quietly cap everything.
This is one of my favorite conversations in a while.
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+ Tiny lessons from this episode.
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Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week.
— Shane Parrish
P.S. I was never a foot person, and this did not help.
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