Elena A.'s Key Ideas from Principles
by Ray Dalio

Most people adopt pre-packaged principles from parents, religious institutions, or other influential figures without much thought. This exposes you to the risk of inconsistency with your true values. Holding incompatible principles will lead to conflict between values and actions.

To make sure your principles and your values are aligned, you need to:

1. Define what do you want
2. Ask yourself “what is true?”
3. Plan what should be done according to 1 and 2

Reality + Dreams + Determination = A Successful Life.

The quality of your life depends on the quality of the decisions you make.

And to make better decisions, you need to adopt “hyperrealism”.

Ray describes “hyperrealism” as accepting the reality as it is rather than wishing it was different. Understanding the reality allows you to learn how to work with them rather than fight them, which leads to greater success.

• Working for what he wanted, not for what others wanted him to do
• Coming up with the best independent opinions he could conceive
• Stress-testing his opinions by having the smartest people finding the flaws in his thinking
• Being wary about overconfidence, and good at not knowing
• Embracing reality, experiencing the results of his decisions, and reflecting on what he did to improve.

A correct understanding of reality is the essential foundation for any good outcome.

• Don’t get attached to your views about how things should be; there should always be space for learning.
• Evolution is the single greatest force in the universe. Evolving is life’s greatest accomplishment and its greatest reward.
• “No pain, no gain”. Evolution won’t always feel good.
• Pain + Reflection = Progress. The quality of your life will depend on the decisions you make at those painful moments.
• Weigh second and third-order consequences.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Your capacity to achieve goals is all about the systems you implement in your “machine”.

To work on your machine, you need to separate your two personalities:

• The “Designer”. The one who manages and plans the systems to achieve your goals
• The “Doer”. The one who works according to the plan created by the “Designer”

Your job as a “Designer” is to look at your yourself as a “Doer” objectively to create the most efficient machine possible. If you are not the best for the job, find a good replacement.

• Know and understand the biggest threat to good decision making - harmful emotions
• Decision making is a two-step process: first learning, then deciding
• Synthesize the situation you're dealing with
• Make your decisions as expected value calculations
• Prioritize by weighing the value of additional information against the cost of not deciding
• Use Principles and convert them into algorithms and have the computer make decisions alongside you.

• Value knowing the truth. You have nothing to fear from knowing it
• Cultivate meaningful work and meaningful relationships
• Foster a culture that allows mistakes and encourages learning from them
• Weight your decision making in a realistic way
• Recognize how to get beyond disagreement
• Remember that WHO is more important than WHAT
• Hire right, because the costs for hiring wrong are huge
• Constantly train, test, evaluate, and sort people
• Identify and don’t tolerate problems
• Diagnose problems to get at their root causes
• Design improvements to your machine to get around your problems
• Do what you set out to do