FS | BRAIN FOOD

July 19th, 2026 - #690 - read online - Free Version

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

Tiny Thoughts

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If you're willing to recognize your mistakes, you massively tilt the odds in your favor.

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In the age of AI, the questions you ask are more important than the answers you know.

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Ask anyone how they got really good at what they do, and there is one answer they won't tell you: ... School.

They learned it on their own. Not because there was a test to pass, but because they were curious.

Insights

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Comedian Jerry Seinfeld on being great:

“No one’s really that great. You know who’s great? The people that just put tremendous amount of hours into it. It’s a game of tonnage.”

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Warren Buffett on finding opportunities:

“What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things. And I’d say that in the fifty-eight years that we’ve been running Berkshire, there’s been a great increase in the number of people doing dumb things.”

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Albert E. N. Gray, The Common Denominator of Success:

“Why are successful [people] able to do things they don't like to do while failures are not? Because successful [people] have a purpose strong enough to make them form the habit of doing things they don't like to do in order to accomplish the purpose they want to accomplish.”

The Knowledge Project

Normally, I list out my favorite moments of last week's episode in this spot. But as I was listening to Gio for the 4th time last night, I realized the entire episode is my favorite. I'm not alone. It's going viral.

When I think about why this conversation resonates so much with me right now, it's because it offers a mental tune-up. And that's just what I needed.

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SPONSOR

Ninety helps companies running on EOS® get everything they need to run the business in one platform. Meetings, Rocks, Scorecards, Issues, To-Dos, and accountability all work together in a connected business operating system, so teams spend less time looking for information and more time executing. Beyond the software, Ninety provides the resources and support to help teams get the most from EOS® as they grow. See how your team can run EOS® with Ninety.

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

— Shane Parrish

P.S. If you don't like snakes, don't look.

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