No. 690 – July 19, 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
If you’re willing to recognize your mistakes, you massively tilt the odds in your favor.
In the age of AI, the questions you ask are more important than the answers you know.
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
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.”
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.”
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.
+ Listen to the full conversation: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Web/Transcript | X
+ Members have access to transcripts and the extended version of this episode.
Thanks for reading,
— Shane Parrish
P.S. I wondered how this was made.