Thursday, September 28, 2023
Illustration via 99designs“Outcome over ego.”
— Shane Parrish
Shane Parrish (@ShaneAParrish) is the entrepreneur and wisdom seeker behind Farnam Street and the host of The Knowledge Project podcast, where he focuses on mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. Shane’s popular online course, Decision by Design, has helped thousands of executives, leaders, and managers around the world learn the repeatable behaviors that improve results. His work has been featured in nearly every major publication, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.
Shane is the author of Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results.
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the interview on YouTube here.
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#695: Shane Parrish on Wisdom from Warren Buffett, Rules for Better Thinking, How to Reduce Blind Spots, The Dangers of Mental Models, and More
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Want to hear another episode with someone who spends his life learning how to solve problems and optimize time? Listen in on my conversation with Atomic Habits author James Clear, in which we discuss habitual accountability, systemic scaffolding, capturing good ideas, leveraging maximal results from minimal scale, defying algorithms, how success generates opportunities and distractions, building good habits while breaking bad ones, optimizing environment for habit adherence, and much more.
#648: James Clear, Atomic Habits — Simple Strategies for Building (and Breaking) Habits, Questions for Personal Mastery and Growth, Tactics for Writing and Launching a Mega-Bestseller, Finding Leverage, and More
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…
SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
- Connect with Shane Parrish:
Farnam Street Blog | The Knowledge Project Podcast | Decision by Design | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
- Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results.
- The Stopwatch Gang by Greg Weston | Amazon
- Village of Carp, ON
- Introduction to TELNET | GeeksforGeeks
- Nortel | Wikipedia
- Communications Security Establishment | Government of Canada
- How a Former Canadian Spy Helps Wall Street Mavens Think Smarter | The New York Times
- Experts Explain Mental State of Military Children | The United States Army
- The Rational Man’s Approach to Fatherhood | Being Dads
- Letting Children Fail is Not a Dereliction of Duty | Farnam Street Blog
- St. Paul’s School
- Letting the World Do the Work for You | Farnam Street Blog
- Unlocking Your Potential: What It Means to Do Your Best | Farnam Street Blog
- If You Want Something Done, Ask a Busy Person To Do It | Quote Investigator
- Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.
- 35. Amateurs Should Stick With Low-Cost Index Funds | 2008 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
- Revisiting Warren Buffett’s Advice to Me in 2008 (Plus: 7 Lessons for Young Investors) | Tim Ferriss
- Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein | Amazon
- Daniel Kahneman on Cognitive Bias and Systems | Walton Family Foundation
- Cognitive Biases Archives | Farnam Street
- A Simple Checklist to Improve Your Decisions | Farnam Street Blog
- The Sunk Cost Fallacy | The Decision Lab
- Results Are a Function of Position by Shane Parrish | Instagram
- Time Warp: Warren Buffett on the Stock Market, Circa 1999 | Forbes
- What Is the Bandwagon Effect? Why People Follow the Crowd | Investopedia
- Smarter, Not Harder: How to Succeed at Work | Farnam Street Blog
- Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (~100 Models Explained) | Farnam Street Blog
- The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts by Rhiannon Beaubien and Shane Parrish | Amazon
- The Great Mental Models Volume 2: Physics, Chemistry and Biology by Rhiannon Beaubien and Shane Parrish | Amazon
- The Great Mental Models Volume 3: Systems and Mathematics by Rhiannon Beaubien and Shane Parrish | Amazon
- Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform | Farnam Street Blog
- The Stoic Art of Negative Visualization | Daily Stoic
- Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step by Edward de Bono | Amazon
- Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono | Amazon
- Let’s Say FeedBurner Shuts Down… | CSS-Tricks
- A Map of the Disney Entertainment Empire Reveals the Deep Connections Between Its Movies, Its Merchandise, Disneyland, & More (1967) | Open Culture
- Why Farnam Street Optimizes for Loyalty, Not Pageviews by Herbert Lui | HuffPost
- Shane Parrish’s Success: Scaling to 300K with Farnam Street | Disco
- What is a Problem Statement? | Elsevier Blog
- The Default-Thinking Method of Problem Solving | Farnam Street Blog
- Avoiding Bad Decisions | Farnam Street Blog
- Why Walking Helps Us Think | The New Yorker
- Automatic Rules for Success by Shane Parrish | Instagram
- Finding the One Decision That Removes 100 Decisions (or, Why I’m Reading No New Books in 2020) | Tim Ferriss
- Maker vs. Manager: How Your Schedule Can Make or Break You | Farnam Street Blog
- Understanding Speed and Velocity: Saying “NO” to the Non-Essential | Farnam Street Blog
- Much of What You’re Going to Do or Say Today is Not Essential | Farnam Street Blog
- Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear | Amazon
- James Clear, Atomic Habits — Simple Strategies for Building (and Breaking) Habits, Questions for Personal Mastery and Growth, Tactics for Writing and Launching a Mega-Bestseller, Finding Leverage, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #648
- The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Timothy Ferriss | Amazon
- The Slow-Carb Diet One-Pager | Tim Ferriss
- Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand: Prioritizing Your Life | Mindful Practices
- The Four Types of Relationships | Farnam Street Blog
- Compound Interest Definition, Formula, and Calculation | Investopedia
- How James Clear Built a Huge Email List Before He Was a Bestselling Author by Josh Spector | For The Interested
- Email Newsletter by Tim Ferriss | 5-Bullet Friday
- Naval Ravikant (2017) #171 | Farnam Street Blog
- Investing: The Rules of the Road | Farnam Street Blog
- Deal Flow: The Venture Capital Term for Business Sentiment | Investopedia
- Investing Archives | Farnam Street
- Investing in an Index: Overview, Examples, and FAQ | Investopedia
- Bill Ackman Liquidates Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, Largest SPAC Ever, and Returns $4 Billion to Investors | Fortune
- Rethinking Investing: Common-Sense Rules for Uncommon Times | Tim Ferriss
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More | The Tim Ferriss Show #691
- Opportunity Cost Formula, Calculation, and What It Can Tell You | Investopedia
- The 5 Levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs | Verywell Mind
- Shane Parrish: Make It a Little Less about Luck Every Day | I Will Teach You to Be Rich
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger | Amazon
- Problem Solving Tools | Farnam Street Blog
- Problem Solving Archives | Farnam Street
- “Outcome over Ego.” | Instagram
- The Wrong Side of Right | Farnam Street Blog
- Why Write? | Farnam Street Blog
- How to Think Better: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught | Farnam Street Blog
- Study: Using GPS Navigation “Switches Off” Brain, Makes You Stupid | The Drive
- Weekly Whiteboard: Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast | McChrystal Group
SHOW NOTES
- [05:43] The The Stopwatch Gang influences a D student.
- [10:54] How a low-grade troublemaker gets vetted for an intelligence job.
- [17:23] The impact of frequent relocation on a child.
- [21:33] The benefits of a challenging education (once the tears dry up).
- [31:09] From 68131-1440.blogger dot com to Farnam Street.
- [36:10] An early exploration of cognitive biases.
- [39:39] “Ordinary moments determine your position, and your position determines your options.”
- [45:55] Incisive, deliberate decision-makers.
- [47:44] Defining mental models.
- [50:47] The declaration of platform independence.
- [52:50] A Farnam Street business breakdown.
- [56:05] Scrutinizing the problem statement.
- [1:03:12] The power of asking “And then what?”
- [1:05:26] Setting yourself up for success with automatic rules.
- [1:21:31] Doubling down on email and the evergreen.
- [1:28:05] Investing with the benefit of deal flow.
- [1:32:41] Thoughts on index fund investment.
- [1:34:58] Factoring sleep into opportunity cost.
- [1:43:33] How to make better decisions.
- [1:48:10] Why should we write in the age of AI?
- [1:52:08] Parting thoughts.
MORE SHANE PARRISH QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW
“Outcome over ego.”
— Shane Parrish
“Automatic rules turn your desired behavior into your default behavior, and they do it when you’re at your best.”
— Shane Parrish
“Why risk what you have and don’t need for what you don’t have and don’t want to begin with?”
— Shane Parrish
“Are you thinking independently of the circumstances, or are the circumstances thinking for you?”
— Shane Parrish
“Writing is the process by which we realize we don’t understand what we’re talking about. And it’s only when you sit down and put pen to paper or even type out an idea that you have, a decision you’re making, an idea you’re wrestling with, that you sort of see where you don’t understand it. And the process of writing is not only refining that idea and helping you reflect on it, but you actually generate new ideas in the process of writing. And I think it’s so easy.”
— Shane Parrish
“You tell yourself a story about why sunk cost doesn’t apply in this situation or why you’re not overconfident in this situation. And the smarter you are, the better those stories get and the more believable they get.”
— Shane Parrish
“If you put Warren Buffett in a bad position where all of his options are bad, it doesn’t matter how smart he is, it doesn’t matter how Warren Buffett he is. Everybody looks like an idiot when they’re in a bad position, and everybody looks like a genius when they’re in a good position.”
— Shane Parrish
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