No. 636 – July 6, 2025
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
Critics arrive before customers.
Overthinking is underdoing with better vocabulary.
Impatience is an expensive emotion.
Every app wants your decision in seconds. Every employer wants results this quarter. Every investment platform profits when you trade. Meanwhile, the boring investor who indexed and touched nothing decades ago owns your neighborhood. Who’s winning?
The patient inherit everything the impatient leave behind.
Insights
John Steinbeck on ignoring the finish line and starting:
“Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.”
This Larry Winget quote reminds me of something I say often, “don’t tell me your priorities, show me your calendar.”
“It’s not that we don’t have time. It’s that we don’t have time for the things that are really important. There’s always enough time to do what’s really important, but we get caught up doing things that aren’t important.”
Stephen Covey on how going slow in the moment means you go faster:
“It’s true that becoming an empathic listener takes time, but it doesn’t take any-where near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you’re already miles down the road, to redo, and to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems.”
The Knowledge Project [Outliers]
Jimmy Pattison is a 96-year-old billionaire you’ve probably never heard of. He built a $16 billion empire that started by selling garden seeds door-to-door.
A few interesting things about him: (1) He went all-in on himself, even using his car dealership’s credit line to execute one of the first hostile takeovers; (2) When bankers called in his loan at the most critical moment, he successfully bluffed his way through; (3) Despite his success, he still drives his pickup truck to visit his businesses personally; and (4) After losing out on a major deal, stilling alone in his fancy hotel he called room service and ordered burnt toast as a form of self-punishment.
This 60-minute episode tells his story and is packed with lessons you can apply in your life.
+ Listen now on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Web
+ Members have access to the transcript
Thanks for reading,
— Shane Parrish
P.S. Honestly, I thought the pigeon would react.
P.P.S. True Food Kitchen‘s new menu is so good.