Ray Dalio - Principles: Life and Work
My rating: ★★★★☆ (85%)
Ray Dalio is a successful investor who wrote a book about how should you live your life. I’ve only read the personal life section of the book which amounts to roughly a third. I skipped Dalio’s autobiography and principles for work since those seemed geared more toward founders/owners of a business.
These are four ideas that seemed the most interesting to me:
1. Reflect on pain
When something is painful or unpleasant for you, note it down and take time to reflect on why that is. Often it’s painful because you are not good at handling the situation and by reflecting on the pain you can get better.
Key insight: If you don’t have enough awareness to recognise when you are in emotional pain, you won’t reflect on and fix the issue and it will repeat itself.
2. Blind spots
You don’t know what you don’t know and your view of reality seems to be the right one for you. But you have blind posts that you can’t uncover. You need to interact with transparent people who share their criticism of you to find your blind spots. This is why you should never get defensive when you receive feedback. You want people to criticise you openly.
3. Nobody is perfect
Learn what are your weaknesses and learn to work around them. You are not perfect and even though neuroplasticity is real, maybe you should focus on improving your strengths and learn to work around your weaknesses (e.g. delegating to other people who are better).
If you don’t understand your weaknesses and think you are good at the task, you will run into the same problem again and again.
4. You are a manager and a worker
Dalio says you have to know yourself. Know your weaknesses. And perceive your involvement in life through two separate lenses: Manager and Worker.
The manager is responsible for designing and organising the work and the worker is responsible for executing it.
Key insight: It’s possible to be a bad worker in some areas and still succeed. The manager needs to fire the worker and find a workaround/hire someone.
Personal impact
Overall, the ideas in the book don’t sound groundbreaking, but Dalio describes them clearly and applicably.
I started keeping a pain journal and I’m adding roughly one new “pain” entry each week.
I also got motivated to define my life goals after reading this book. I’ll write about the 45-hour journaling session in another post.
I recommend reading the “personal principles” section of the book. It has a high signal/noise ratio.