Golden Sentences from Ray Dalio's "Principles"

Introduction: Recently, I have seen this book on many platforms such as WeChat Reading, CITIC Publishing App, Get, etc., plus Partners in the company have also recommended this book many times. There are many passages in the book that are worth thinking about.

01So I summed up my first principle: think independently and decide: (1) what you want; (2) what the facts are; (3) facing the facts, how do you achieve it My own wishes...

02 I think the key to success is knowing how to pursue a lot of things hard, but also knowing how to fail correctly. “Failing right” means being able to learn important lessons in the process of experiencing painful failure, thereby avoiding “failing wrong”, which means being kicked out for failure.

03 I understand how to weight different people’s opinions to choose the best one. In other words, I make decisions using a credibility-weighted approach.

04The most important thing is not to predict the future, but to know how to respond reasonably to the available information at each point in time.

05The safest way to have many advantages without being exposed to unacceptable disadvantages is to make a series of good, unrelated bets that balance and complement each other. .

06 The greatest success a manager can achieve is to be able to organize others to do things well without you. The next best thing is that you can do it yourself, the worst thing is that you can't even do it well.

07 Whenever faced with whether to achieve their own goals or to please others (or not let others down), they will choose to achieve their goals.

08 Think of life as a game, and every problem I face is a mystery that needs to be solved. By solving the puzzle I gain a gem, a principle that will help me avoid the same problem in the future. Continuously collecting gems like this improves my decision-making so that I can progress to higher levels of the game, where the games become harder and the stakes involved become larger and larger.

09 Understanding reality, accepting reality, and dealing with real problems are both pragmatic and wonderful. I was already a hyper-realistic person, so I learned to appreciate the beauty of all realities, including the harsh ones, and came to despise unrealistic idealism.

10 Dreams + Reality + Determination = Successful Life.

11. For rapid learning and effective change, extreme open-mindedness and extreme transparency are of infinite value.

12 If people did not hide their opinions, but shared them openly, how much misunderstandings would be reduced, how efficiently the world would operate, and how close we would be to the truth. 13 Embracing radical truth and radical transparency will lead to more meaningful work and more meaningful relationships.

14. When I see something natural that I (or humans) think is wrong, I assume I am wrong and then try to figure out why it makes sense for nature to behave the way it does.

15 will naturally move towards overall optimization rather than individual optimization, but most people only judge the quality of things based on their impact on themselves.

16 Most people call things that are not good for themselves or the people they care about bad things, while ignoring the greater good. Groups also have this tendency: believers of one religion will think that their beliefs are good and other people's beliefs are bad, causing believers of both parties to kill each other, and both believe that they are doing the right thing.

17. For a thing to be "good", it must conform to the laws of reality and promote the overall evolution, which can bring the greatest returns.

18 If you don’t evolve, you will die.

19. If you have never experienced failure, it means that you have not worked hard to break through your limits, and if you do not work hard to break through your limits, you cannot maximize your potential.

20 Pain is a signal! Just like a person who doesn't exercise starts exercising, developing the habit of enjoying pain and learning from pain will allow people to "step into a new realm."

21 No matter what situations you encounter in life, if you take responsibility and make good decisions instead of complaining about things you have no control over, you will be more likely to succeed and find happiness. Psychologists call this having an "internal locus of control," and various studies consistently show that people with an "internal locus of control" do better than others.

22 In my opinion, the process of personal evolution (i.e. the cycle I described in the previous point) occurs through 5 different steps. If you can do those 5 things well, you will almost certainly succeed. These five steps are probably: 1. Have clear goals. 2. Find the problems that are preventing you from achieving these goals and not tolerate problems. 3. Accurately diagnose problems and get to their root cause. 4． Plan solutions that will solve the problem. 5． Do whatever is necessary to implement these plans and achieve results.

23 Choosing a goal often means giving up something you want in order to get something else you want or need more.

24. Don’t confuse goals and desires... A reasonable goal is something you really need to achieve, a desire is something you want but will prevent you from achieving your goal. Desire is usually a direct result.

25. If you have flexibility and self-accountability, there is little that can stop you from succeeding.

26. Think of your plan as a movie script, and then think step by step about who will do what.

27The two biggest obstacles to sound decision-making are your self-awareness and blind spots.

28. Once you understand how the "logical and conscious you" are at war with the "emotional and subconscious you", you can imagine how your "two yous" are also at war with each other. The "two selves" of dealing with other people.

29 The lower self is like a trained fighting dog, always maintaining a fighting spirit, while the higher self wants to figure things out. This can be confusing because neither you nor the people you deal with often have any idea that these lower-level beasts are in your brain, let alone that they are trying to kidnap everyone. .

30Meaningful work and meaningful relationships are not only good choices we make, they are biological needs we are born with.

31 A Shaper is someone who can take an idea all the way to its realization... What I mean by "Shaper" is someone who can come up with a unique and valuable vision and deliver it with a beautiful way to realize the vision (often in the face of skepticism from others). Shapers see the big picture as well as the details. In my opinion, "Shaper" = "Idealist" + "Pragmatic Thinker" + "Perseverance".

32 The best choice is the one with more advantages than disadvantages, not the one with no disadvantages.

33 As the saying goes: "Every fool can complicate things, only a genius can simplify things."

34 So the best decision-makers in the world are like this People: Have reason, imagination and perseverance, know what they value and want, and also use computers, algorithms and game theory.

35Bridgewater’s approach is to select creative ideas and strive to engage in meaningful work and build meaningful relationships through extreme truth-seeking and extreme transparency. What I mean by meaningful work is a career that people are passionate about; meaningful relationships are when people can truly care for each other (like a big family). I believe that these two aspects are complementary to each other, and being extremely truth-seeking and extremely transparent will enable continuous improvement in work achievements and interpersonal relationships.

36. In order to achieve a great cause, you must stand firm and not give in on things that should not be compromised.

37 For most people, joining a good team and completing a task together is more rewarding than making money. Many studies have shown that the correlation between a person's happiness and the money he earns is low or even zero, but happiness is highly correlated with the quality of relationships a person has established.

38. Creativity selection = extreme truth-seeking + extreme transparency + credibility-weighted decision-making.

39. What I believe in is healthier loyalty based on an open search for facts. Public expressions of principled thinking and complete transparency are the best prescriptions for discouraging backroom deals. 40 Avoiding conflicts also avoids opportunities to resolve conflicts; if you avoid small conflicts, there will often be big conflicts later, which may even lead to alienation between people.

41 All great creative collaborations are the same. By combining your skills like different instruments and improvising movements while submitting yourself to the goals of the group, you can produce something great.

42 Doing big things well is far more important than doing small things to the extreme.

43. You should look at yourself and others in the entire system from a higher level. In other words, you have to think beyond the limitations of your thinking, see your point of view as one among many, and adopt a creative merit-based approach to all points of view, rather than just choosing based on your own likes and dislikes.

44. What is more important than doing something is finding the right person to do it.

45. Choose people who ask a lot of good questions. Smart people always ask the most thoughtful questions, rather than having answers to everything. Good questions are a better indicator of future success than good answers.

46. Think more about how to make the cake bigger, rather than how to cut the cake so that you can get the biggest piece.

47 Remember that to maintain a great partnership, consideration and generosity are more important than money.

48. Learn from failures as much as from successes.

49. More importantly, having good challengers is better than having good followers.

50 For creative meritocracy to work, people need to do three things: (1) express their most honest thoughts and let everyone discuss them openly; (2) express differences rationally so that everyone can have high-quality discussions. Debate, expand ideas, and try to form the optimal collective decision; (3) Use creative merit-based selection to deal with all different opinions (such as credibility-weighted decision-making).