FS | BRAIN FOOD

October 12, 2025 - #650 - read online - Free Version

Welcome to Brain Food, your weekly signal in a world full of noise.

+ Clear Thinking was published 2 years ago this week. As of this week, we've hit both the New York Times list and the Sunday Daily Times list. I just want to say thank you. (Fun fact: the largest single order of this book was 18,000 copies by one organization who sent it to all their clients.)

Tiny Thoughts

*

Guard your time. Don't waste others by lecturing them about it.

**

Not everyone runs on your clock. Your urgent isn't their urgent.

While you're optimizing every minute toward specific goals, others might be optimizing for presence, relationships, or balance.

The key is protecting your time without demonizing theirs.

***

Borrowed wisdom breaks under pressure because you haven't earned it.

You're trusting someone else's compression without knowing what created it.

Earned wisdom, on the other hand, holds up because it's rooted in your actual experience. You know when it works, why it works, when to ignore it and when to bend it because you created the compression.

Insights

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Journalist Christopher Morley on the success:

“There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

**

Author William James Dawson on money:

“The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who can buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his banker, values nothing that he buys.”

***

Professional boxer Chris Eubank Jr. on quitting:

“There are times I'll be on the treadmill, where I'll be running, and I'll get cramp in my calf and I've still got 8 minutes to go, because I've set the timer for 40 minutes and I'm on 32 minutes. The cramp starts and I will run with one leg, literally limping, because if the treadmill can make me quit, what happens when I get into the ring with a guy who's hit me, and I'm hurt? He's going to make me quit too. It's hugely important because it teaches you to believe that no matter how hard things get, you are the type of person that will find a way. It doesn't matter if people are watching, or if nobody would know I quit. You can't quit when no one is watching you don't ever want to put that, that spirit inside yourself, you've got to keep those demons out. They are demons and if you let them in often enough, they will take over!”

Outliers

Hetty Green was the richest woman you’ve never heard of.

In the late 1800s, she built a fortune worth billions today in a world designed to stop her. She was a force that couldn’t be stopped.

Her strategies still work today. This is the story of how an unwanted daughter became “The Witch of Wall Street,” and a playbook for building lasting wealth and independence.

+ Listen to the full episode on Apple | Spotify | Web | X

Here are 10 of the maxims I took away from this episode and my research

1. “If you can manage your brain, you can manage your fortune.”
2. The skills to get rich and the skills to stay rich are not the same.
3. Only invest when downside risk is low and upside is high.
4. Everyone looks smart when they’re in a good position, and even the smartest person looks like a fool in a bad one.
5. “I go my own way, take no partners, risk nobody else’s fortune.”
6. Mix extreme patience with extreme decisiveness.
7. “Watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.”
8. Move in silence. Keep your positions private.
9. Never take advantage of people, even when you could.
10. “Seek elegance rather than luxury, refinement rather than fashion.”

Want to go even deeper?

+ Read the other 19 maxims here
+ Hetty's list of things not to do she gave to her children.
+ 12 deeper lessons from this episode
+ While researching this episode, I highlighted 123 passages from Hetty's biography. Members can read them and more in the Repository.

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Thanks for reading,

— Shane Parrish

P.S. You don't see a baby elephant mudslide everday.

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