October 27, 2024 | #600 | read on fs.blog | Free Version

Welcome to Brain Food, a weekly newsletter full of timeless ideas and insights you can use in life and work.

Tiny Thoughts

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Action creates inspiration.

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The hard part isn't knowing what to do; it's doing it daily, whether you feel like it or not.

The challenge isn't knowing you should work out; it's putting on your shoes and running in the cold when you'd rather sit at home under a warm blanket. The challenge isn't determining the most important project; it's sitting down and doing it when you'd rather browse social media.

If you're waiting for inspiration, you've already lost.

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The most practical skill you can learn is working smarter. But here's what nobody tells you about working smarter: it often looks like you're working slower.

A programmer might spend 20 hours wrestling with a difficult algorithm, then have an insight in the shower that solves it in 10 lines of code. Those 20 hours weren't wasted—they were necessary for the insight.

Most people never get past superficial engagement. They fragment their attention into smaller and smaller pieces — checking Slack every 6 minutes, switching tasks 40 times per hour, and treating their minds like a news feed instead of a supercomputer.

Working smarter often requires looking less productive in the short term. That marketing brief you spend three hours perfecting might look identical to one written in 30 minutes. But the thoroughness of your thinking will be reflected in every decision that follows.

Your first thought is what everyone else thinks. Your best thought comes after you've thought long enough to forget what everyone thinks. The difference between good and exceptional isn't hours worked – it's the depth of thought applied to the right problems.

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(Share Tiny Thought one, two, or three on Twitter.)

Insights

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Jeff Bezos on being yourself:

“The world wants you to be typical. Don’t let it happen.”

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Stephen Covey with an example of how slow in the moment is fast in the end:

“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.”

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Alexi Pappas on giving 100 percent of what you have everyday:

“Think of training as a series of boxes all of equal value. Each day, I tick a box. The hard-workout box is just as important as the recovery box, and it is crucial not to place too much emphasis on any single box, good or bad. What is crucial is to give a hundred percent of what you have every day, whether it’s a hundred percent of crap or a hundred percent of gold. You acknowledge the day and move on to the next.”

Mental Model

V1 | General Thinking Tools | Second-Order Thinking

Second-­order thinking is a method of thinking that goes beyond the surface level, beyond the knee-­jerk reactions and short-­term gains. It asks us to play the long game, to anticipate the ripple effects of our actions, and to make choices that will benefit us not just today but in the months and years to come.

Second-order thinking demands we ask: And then what?

Think of a chess master contemplating her next move. She doesn’t just consider how the move will affect the next turn but how it will shape the entire game. She’s thinking many steps ahead. She’s considering her own strategy and her opponent’s likely response.

In our daily lives, we’re often driven by first-­order thinking. We make decisions based on what makes us happy now, what eases our current discomfort, or satisfies our immediate desires.

Second-­order thinking asks us to consider the long-­term implications of our choices to make decisions based not just on what feels good now but on what will lead to the best outcomes over time. In the end, second-­order thinking is about playing the long game. It’s about choosing the ultimate goal over the immediate goal.

— Source: The Great Mental Models v1: General Thinking Tools

Highlights

K.C. Irving is one of the best entrepreneurs you've never heard of. This story is a great example of his resourcefulness and determination.

"K.C. saw an opportunity, for example, to get into the passenger bus business, since roads were of better quality and many New Brunswickers could not afford an automobile. The problem: he could not afford to buy buses built in central Canada or in the United States. The solution: he decided to cut Ford bodies into two, add space to put in seats, and then sit them on top of imported British Leyland chassis. He now had buses to compete for passenger traffic. To others, this was a classic example of vertical integration because buses needed oil and gas to operate. To K.C., it was simply a case of finding an affordable way to get into this line of business.”

— Thanks for the Business: K.C. Irving, Arthur Irving, and the Story of Irving Oil by Donald Savoie (Members can access my highlights from this book and hundreds of others in the repository.)

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Thanks for reading,
— Shane Parrish

P.S. A science-based policy on hug length at an NZ airport.

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