Principles are ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life.
Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, cites principles as his key to success.
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Over forty years later, Bridgewater has grown into the largest hedge fund in the world and the fifth most important private company in the United States (according to Fortune magazine), and Dalio himself has been named to TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way Dalio discovered unique principles that have led to his and Bridgewater’s unique success. It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio, that he believes are the reason behind whatever success he has had. He is now at a stage in his life that he wants to pass these principles along to others for them to judge for themselves and to do whatever they want with them.
Life Principle
Learn How to Make Decisions Effectively
As a professional decision maker, I have spent my life studying how to make decisions effectively and have constantly looked for rules and systems that will improve my odds of being right and ending up with more of whatever it is that I am after.
One of the most important things I've come to understand is that most of the processes that go into everyday decision making are subconscious and more complex than is widely understood. For example, think about how you choose and maintain a safe distance behind the car in front of you when you are driving. Now describe the process in enough detail that someone who has never driven a car before can do it as well as you can, or so that it can be programmed into the computer that controls an autonomous car. I bet you can't.
Now think about the challenge of making all of your decisions well, in a systematic, repeatable way, and then being able to describe the processes so clearly and precisely that anyone else can make the same quality decisions under the same circumstances. That is what I aspire to do and have found to be invaluable, even when highly imperfect.
While there is no one best way to make decisions, there are some universal rules for good decision making.
Life Principle
Any person or organization can adopt Principles to better achieve their goals.
Learn what Principles are and how they are applied at Principles.com
