No. 461 — Feb 27, 2022 — Read on FS

Welcome to Sunday Brain Food: a weekly newsletter full of ideas and insights that never expire.

FS

Thought experiments are a classic tool used by many great thinkers. They enable us to explore impossible situations and predict their implications and outcomes. Mastering thought experiments can help you confront difficult questions and anticipate (and prevent) problems.

— Solving Difficult Problems

TKP Podcast

"We should ask ourselves, why does the snooze button exist? And I’ve thought about this quite deeply. It sounds a stupid thing to spend cognitive energy on thinking about. But I actually think it’s quite profound. That the snooze button existed because we are always as a first world society carrying some form of a sleep debt because the alarm goes off and your instant urge is “Let me sleep longer.” And the snooze button, I think is the perennial expression of the human frustration of this thing called a chronic lingering sleep debt."

— I sat down with scientist Matthew Walker to uncover the mysteries of sleep and learn how we can get a better sleep every night. Listen to this episode on FS (with show notes), Apple Podcasts, Spotify, watch on YouTube, or read the transcript.

Insight

“We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans — because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone- because we have the impulse to explain who we are. Not just how tall we are, or thin… but who we are internally… perhaps even spiritually. There’s something, which impels us to show our inner-souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know."

— Maya Angelou

Tiny Thought

“Patience is not passive, on the contrary, it is concentrated strength.” ― Bruce Lee

People wait in different ways. Some are passive. Others are active. These two approaches are as different as the results they yield.

Passive patience is waiting for the world to give you the thing you want. A lot of people live their life with passive patience. Rather than go after the promotion at work they expect it to fall in their lap. Rather than go after the love of their life, they sit back and expect to be courted. Rather than chase their dreams, they wait for just the right opening that always seems around the corner but never comes. These people have the wrong kind of patience.

Active patience is different. Active patience demands action and intention, even while waiting for results. Active patience means not only applying for the promotion but taking your time to build the skills you need to put yourself in the best position to succeed. Active patience means starting the business, writing the book, going after the love of your life.

Active patience puts you in the best position to get what you want. There is almost always an action you can take to improve the odds.

Active in the moment but patient with the results.

Active patience.

(Share this Tiny Thought on Twitter)

Master Your Decisions

If you want to learn the repeatable skills and behaviors that take your decision-making to the next level and unlock your potential, register for Decision by Design today. This is the only time we'll be offering the course this year.

FS Members get $100 off the course. Not a member yet? Sign up for Decision by Design and we’ll send you a discount code for $100 off the membership in Week 3. This is for new registrations only.

Explore Your Curiosity

"When I began to understand that attitude doesn’t have anything to do with survival, I felt myself coming up out of deep water. I didn’t cause my cancer by having a bad attitude, and I wasn’t going to cure it by having a good one. And then Coscarelli told me the whole truth about cancer. If you’re ready, I will tell it to you."

— The Secret of Cancer (This is what amazing writing looks like.)

“It's very valuable to cultivate this habit of seeking opportunities for scaling, even if the payoff is uneven; people who haggle about everything will end up getting moved to better seats on planes every so often, but if they also negotiate a 2% better raise or offer every single year, their lifetime earnings will be 55% higher, and if they fight for higher equity compensation at the right time the results can be very nice indeed.”

— The Factorio Mindset

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Stay safe,
— Shane

P.S. A judge wrote her opinion with a ten-stanza footnote that rhymed in a case involving Eminem.