Finished 07/07/2020

Principles

Ray Dalio

⭐⭐

• Economy
• Lifestyle

Tough experience, quite dull. More than a book, it is a manual with a list of principles, something for management more than for me. Certainly interesting, but a tough read. It might be useful to reread it in the future. Good summary here.

Notes

3 parts: his life (not very useful), the fundamental principles, and 200 points with various context. Focus on the principles, obviously.

• Principle 1: embrace reality and deal with it. Focus on your weaknesses, on the things you can control, and address them with logic.

• Principle 2: 5-Step Program to get what you want from life. His most important point:

  • Have clear goals.
  • Identify the problems that stand in your way.
  • Accurately diagnose the problems to get at their root causes.
  • Design plans that will get you around them.
  • Do what is necessary to push these designs through to results.

• Principle 3: be open-minded. Set the ego aside, listen to everyone, be curious to learn, and look at mistakes as opportunities to grow.

• Principle 4: understand that people are different. Some are left, some are right, some structured, others creative, etc. There can be misunderstandings, so recognize this and get to know them.

• Principle 5: learn how to make decisions effectively. By using all these principles he can make decisions more easily, simply by following them. He already has a ready-made structure. This is why it might be worth rereading it when I am a decision-maker.

• To conclude, the article identifies 11 main lessons:

  1. Pain + Reflection = Progress.
  2. Have a higher perspective of yourself and the world.
  3. Success = Meaningful Work + Meaningful Relationships.
  4. Overcome your two barriers to success: Ego and Blind spots.
  5. Be radically open-minded to be successful.
  6. Follow the looping 5-step process to get to success.
  7. Know your objective strengths and weaknesses and those of others.
  8. Find people with complementary strengths to help you along the 5-step process.
  9. Make believability-weighted decisions by considering the credibility of people.
  10. Use principles to systematize your decision making.
  11. Navigate levels of a decision effectively.