Book summary: Principles, Ray Dalio

  • Principles: fundamental truths that serve as foundations for behavior to help you get what you want out of life, reused in similar situations
    • open minded
    • clear headed
    • courage of application
  • deal with only people who share same values reduce misunderstanding and conflict
  • systemize decision making process
    • two distinct roles
      • see yourself as designer of machine
      • see yourself as worker with your machine
    • Make decisions as expected value calculation
  • mediation: calm open mindedness to think more clearly and creatively
    • Jobs was also doing it
    • two brains which fight
      • upper logical brain
      • lower emotional brain
    • Reconcile feelings with thinking
  • See clearly what your priorities/goals are and act base on this
    • warning: money has no intrinsic value
    • do not confuse desires/wants for goals/must haves
  • Understand the reasoning of the smartest people who disagree with you
  • Maturity: reject good opportunity to pursue even better ones
  • make a handful of uncorrelated bets that are balanced and leveraged well is the surest way of having a lot of upsides without being exposed to unacceptable down-side
  • Mutually exclusive: Being radically truthful with each other versus being happy and satisfied
  • When faced with two choices that are seemingly at odds, go slowly to figure out how to get as much of both as possible
  • Shapers
    • independent thinkers
    • don’t let anyone or anything stand in their way of achieving their goals
    • strong mental maps of how things should be done
    • willingness to test these mental maps – open to change
    • extreme resilience
    • cultivate a wider range of vision than most or get those through others
    • lack of domain knowledge: start reading more books
    • types: inventors or managers
  • If conflicts get resolved before they become acute, there will be no need for heros
    • heroes: given his life to something bigger or other than himself. Along the way they suffer set backs
  • Jim Collins: put a capable CEO in place, a capable governance system to replace CEO if they are not capable
  • Success does not automatically transfer to new roles
  • what is Courage?
    • Successful life = Dreams + 1) Reality + Determination
      • evolution: life’s greatest accomplishment and reward
      • rapid trial and error
        • watch out for second and third order impact
        • 3) don’t overweigh first order impact
    • Progress = Pain + Reflection
      • 5) accept responsibility of bad outcome
      • 2) don’t worry about looking good
      • 4) accept pain
    • Dealing with weakness
      • deny
      • accept and work to compensate – build your skillset
      • accept and find ways around – get others to help – Easiest Path
      • change what you are going after
      • PS: doesn’t matter so long as you find solution
  • Good mental maps leads to being good at what you do
  • Choose habits well
    • cultivate good ones eradicate bad ones
    • execute without needing to think

Reference Books

  • The hero with a thousand faces, Joseph Campbell
  • The lessons of history, Will and Ariel Durant
  • River out of Eden, Richard Dawkins
  • On the role of individual in history, Georgi Plekhanov
  • Subliminal, Leonard Mlodinow
  • The meaning of human existence, Edward O Wilson
  • Beyond Religion, Dalai Lama
  • The Power of Habit, Charles Duhiggs

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