Dalio’s life principles include many small principles, but the main core lies in how to understand the world with an absolutely rational attitude, that is, to truly face reality.

Human beings have animal nature, so many times people let their inner animal spirits drive them to act, thereby neglecting the pursuit of facts and truth.

For example, Buffett once said that one of his investment principles is "Be greedy when others are fearful, and be fearful when others are greedy." This investment principle sounds simple, but anyone with stock investment experience knows that it is too difficult to practice this principle. When the market plummets, it is difficult for you to remain rational and you are likely to follow Others sold their stocks together.

Dalio summarized the "Five Steps to Achieve Goals" to help rational thinking and action.

The five steps are: setting goals, recognizing the problem, diagnosing the problem, designing a solution and implementing the solution.

These five steps may seem simple, but very few of them can actually push things to completion.

In addition to the fact that everyone has his or her own blind spots, looks at problems from different angles, and has habitual thinking patterns that prevent us from accurately understanding and judging the situation, Dalio believes that the greatest tragedy of mankind is , in fact, it is because of arrogance and conceit, because these make us do things with wrong views and are unwilling to accept doubts. The emotional you in the brain is always fighting against the rational you, fighting for control, so it is difficult to recognize It is also difficult to do the right thing.

So, what can we do to let the rational "you" prevail, overcome arrogance and conceit, and avoid blind spots?

Be extremely open-minded and admit that you have blind spots and flaws.

Dalio has interacted with countless elite people, and none of them is perfect. But these people are smart. They can remain extremely open when facing doubts and criticisms from the outside world, and they are very clear about where they have blind spots and flaws, so as to constantly evolve themselves.

In addition to remaining extremely open, Dalio believes that we should also take the initiative to treat all aspects of life in a scientific and rational way, and take the initiative to turn perceptual experience into rational summaries.

For example, if you ask someone how long it takes you to commute to get off work every day, most people will say "more than forty minutes" or "about an hour", but very few people will say "more than forty minutes" or "about an hour". Few people record the time they spend commuting to and from get off work every day, and then conduct statistical analysis to arrive at an accurate average commuting time, as well as the longest and shortest time spent commuting to and from get off work.

If you can record accurately and treat life with this scientific and rational attitude, your sense of control over life will increase to more than one level.

In essence, the "work principles" and "life principles" summarized by Dalio are of the same origin.

He himself said in the book that "work principles" are actually the application of "life principles" to career, but work principles are more important than life principles.

He listed hundreds of principles in the book, which can be roughly divided into three dimensions: one is people, one is culture, and the other is organization building and management.

Among these hundreds of principles, the most important one is the "creative merit selection" pursued by Bridgewater Fund, which is the principle of "excellent ideas first".

"Excellent ideas first" means that when making decisions, the company should choose the most reasonable and scientific option, rather than just relying on who has the highest position.

Dalio believes that if an organization wants to succeed, it does not depend on how talented the founder is, nor how many resources it has at hand, but on whether the company can adhere to the principle of "excellent ideas first" .

To adhere to this principle, we must first show everyone’s ideas for everyone to see, and then everyone will judge each other and put forward different opinions.

Dalio himself uses a credibility-weighted decision-making method at "Bridgewater Funds", which fully takes into account everyone's professional background and then gives different weights to the opinions of people with different expertise. , and finally weighted calculation for decision-making. This not only ensures fairness and democracy in the decision-making process, but also ensures the scientificity and feasibility of the decision-making results.

Of course, this decision-making method is based on the premise that everyone is different, and everyone has their own unique perspective and limitations. In order to ensure the quality of the final decision, it is necessary to put forward viewpoints from different perspectives and fully demonstrate them to ensure the optimization of the decision.

In order to ensure the full expression of ideas, another working principle is involved, which is extreme transparency and extreme authenticity. This actually echoes the "extreme openness" in the life principle.

For example, once, Dalio received an email. This email was sent by his subordinate, and it said: "Dalio, your speech at the company meeting today was simply unqualified. You did not make any preparation at all, otherwise, you would not have been able to speak well." That sucks. In the future, you should spend more time preparing for meetings. If necessary, I can even come to prepare with you and help you warm up.

At the end of the letter, the subordinate made up for it and said: "If you think my opinion is wrong, you can ask other colleagues, or ask me directly." ”

It is rare for subordinates to directly challenge their bosses like this in other companies. But for Dalio, such conversations happen every day, and he will not be angry at all because of such things. Only in this way can colleagues dare to be honest with each other. Within the company, regardless of their level, colleagues must point out any problems or ideas in a timely manner. This is the principle of "extreme transparency" they pursue.

Although this kind of transparent and honest corporate culture can keep everyone rational and operate efficiently, it also comes at a certain cost. The turnover rate of new employees is very high, and one-third of employees will leave the company in the first two years. , because the communication between colleagues is too rough, and they are often questioned.

You may think that such a company is too harsh on employees, but this is what Dalio insists on. Principles, his philosophy is not to put people first, but to put principles first.

In the introduction to this book, Dalio also said that the value of his principles should be decided by the readers.

In fact, what is more important is not the principle itself, but the thinking behind the principle. Only by forming our own principles can we make better decisions.

We cannot make decisions by listening to other people’s experiences. A principle, in essence, can only come from one's own "pain and reflection"

Therefore, Dalio encourages everyone to record their mistakes and reflections rationally and become a "professional." ”.

In fact, in normal work and life, we will experience many things. After experiencing some things, we will draw some lessons and sometimes even have a sudden inspiration.

But the default setting of the human brain is "short-term memory". As long as we don't deliberately repeat something to remember something, the experience we gain and the good ideas we come up with are also good. Well, it’s easy to forget.

This "Principles" tells us that the experience gained in life and career should not just stay at the emotional level, but must be recorded and summarized rationally, so that we can Every step you take counts.