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Wealth isn’t a Distinction

No. 678 – April 26, 2026

Welcome to Brain Food, a weekly newsletter full of timeless ideas and insights you can use in life and work. (Read the archives). Not subscribed? Learn more and sign up.

Tiny Thoughts

Skill is whatever happens repeatedly. Everything else is a story.


The real reason to plan the night before is to deny you the option of planning again tomorrow morning.


One way to beat fear is with steps so small they don’t scare you.

As you get closer to fear, you realize there was never anything there to be afraid of.

Insights

Rory McIlroy on where to focus:

“One of the things that I love is focusing on the process over the prize.”


Charlie Munger on how to develop good judgment:

“I sought good judgment mostly by collecting instances of bad judgment, then pondering ways to avoid such outcomes.”


John D. Rockefeller on why he hated being labeled as wealthy:

“Wealth isn’t a distinction. If I have no other achievement to my credit than the accumulation of wealth, then I have made a poor success of my life.”

The Knowledge Project

This conversation is a dream come true. When I got the call, I had to pinch myself.

But a few days later, I was en route to San Francisco to talk with Greg Brockman.

Greg is the co-founder of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. I had so many questions – 8 pages to be specific.

Like many of you, I wanted to know what REALLY happened when Sam Altman was fired, how OpenAI started, why they moved away from AI, why they are so bad at naming models, and what’s coming next.

Greg takes us inside the race for AGI and answers the question everyone really wants to know: What happens to your job?

+ Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Web/Transcript | X

Thanks for reading,

— Shane Parrish

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