January 12, 2025 | #611 | read on fs.blog | Free Version

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

Tiny Thoughts

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Intensity is common, consistency is rare.

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Focused people eliminate options, not accumulate them.

Warren Buffett exemplifies this - he's made his fortune by carefully selecting a few investments and sticking with them for decades, ignoring thousands of other opportunities.

Without a focus, everything becomes a distraction.

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When you think something's impossible, consider this: people who achieve extraordinary things are willing to endure what others won't.

Take SpaceX. In 2002, most experts said private companies couldn't build orbital rockets. Musk accepted years of failure and ridicule that others wouldn't.

What you call impossible is often just pain you're unwilling to endure.

Insights

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Charlie Munger on avoiding stupidity:

“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”

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Abraham Lincoln on haters:

“If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

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George Leonard on how mastery is nothing but a series of plateaus with brief spurts of progress:

“The most important lessons here — especially for young people — is that even if you’re shooting for the stars, you’re going to spend most of your time on a plateau. That’s where the deepest, most lasting learning takes place, so you might as well enjoy it. When I was first learning…I just assumed that I would steadily improve. My first plateau was something of a shock and disappointment, but I persevered and finally experienced an apparent spurt of learning. The next time my outward progress stopped, I said to myself ‘oh damn, another plateau’. After a few months, there was another spurt of progress and then, of course, the inevitable plateau. This time, something marvellous happened. I found myself thinking ‘Oh boy, another plateau. Good, if I stay on it and keep practicing, I’m absolutely assured another surge of progress. It was one of the best and warmest moments of my life.’"

— Source: Esquire Magazine, May 1987

Mental Model of the Week

V4 | Economics | Specialization

Specialization is a ­trade-­off: pursuing one course means not pursuing another. It’s narrowing your focus to increase your impact.

In a world of infinite knowledge and finite time, specialization is the key to unlocking mastery. It’s about going deep, not wide.

Specialization has risks. If the world changes, what was once a valuable specialty can become obsolete. And yet, we need specialists. You wouldn’t want a generalist doing your brain surgery or a root canal.

Ultimately, specialization is about where you spend your time and effort. It’s how you stand out. It’s choosing to be great at one thing instead of okay at many.

— Source: The Great Mental Models v4: Economics and Art

Reading

I've been reading The World According to Joan Didion, which is full of quotes and anecdotes like this one:

"Didion once told a participant in a writing seminar that to get through writer’s block, you had to write one sentence, and then another, and then another. To be a writer, you must write."

And this one:

"At Vogue, she learned the tight, functional economy of public prose. Her editor, Allene Talmey, would assign her to write a story in three hundred words, then, when she was finished, tell her to pare it down to fifty. 'We wrote long and published short and by doing that Joan learned to write,' Talmey told the New York Times. ... 'It was at Vogue that I learned a kind of ease with words, a way of regarding words not as mirrors of my own inadequacy but as tools, toys, weapons to be deployed strategically on a page.'"

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Thanks for reading,
— Shane Parrish

P.S. Escaping a paper world.

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