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Summary: Principles – Life and Work by Ray Dalio
Note: This is a SUMMARY of Ray Dalio's bestseller, Principles: Life & Work
Ray Dalio was raised in a middle-class family in Long Island, NY and later became one of the 100 wealthiest people in the world (according to Forbes). He found Bridgewater Associates out of his two-bedroom apartment and grew it to become the world’s most successful hedge fund managing over $160 billion in assets.
Bridgewater is renown for their policies of radical transparency and open-mindedness. If you work there, you're always expected to say what you think and be brutally honest, no matter your seniority. It’s a unique company culture, and it runs on the Principles discussed in this book.
These simple but profound Principles took 40 years to perfect. They were refined and evolved over that time. Each time Dalio and his partners encountered a new problem or challenge, they tried to find the underlying principle at work and tried to learn from their pain and struggle.
Dalio has been called the “Da Vinci” of investing, but his knowledge base spreads much wider than the world economy. He is a bold and independent thinker with unusual and refreshingly grounded ideas on how to manage and grow a successful company as well as on how to live a fuller life.
Dalio's principles will inspire any would-be entrepreneur and anyone who wants to find practical ways to make better decisions, deal with reality, and improve his or her lot in life. His no-nonsense, logical, and fire-tested strategies are useful to improve your ability to study, think clearly, and get ahead in business, as well as any other sphere of your life.
Reading is primarily an investment of your time with the aim of gaining useful knowledge and perspective. However, it's often true that people start out reading a long book with all the best intentions, but when life gets in the way, there's never enough time to finish it. As such, reading our summary is the perfect way to introduce you to the full material and grasp the essential insights of Ray Dalio’s life-changing book, Principles.
The best-quality summaries on Amazon, guaranteed
Team of professional native-English writers and editors (a huge issue on Amazon; check the reviews of ANY other summary book company to see for yourself)
Engaged CEO and responsive team committed to your personal growth and making your reading experience superb
Bonus Power Insights gives you the main takeaways to keep top-of-mind
Bonus 30-Day Action Plan to implement the book’s knowledge to your daily life
Our summaries are crafted for busy high-achievers who still have the insatiable appetite to keep learning and growing. We only curate summaries of books we adamantly believe have the highest potential for personal-growth. Simply put, our summaries provide the fastest way to increase perspective and productivity, guaranteed.
Our team has singled out the key concepts and trimmed out all the rest, allowing you to digest the author's core message in a fraction of the time.
Ray Dalio was raised in a middle-class family in Long Island, NY and later became one of the 100 wealthiest people in the world (according to Forbes). He found Bridgewater Associates out of his two-bedroom apartment and grew it to become the world’s most successful hedge fund managing over $160 billion in assets.
Bridgewater is renown for their policies of radical transparency and open-mindedness. If you work there, you're always expected to say what you think and be brutally honest, no matter your seniority. It’s a unique company culture, and it runs on the Principles discussed in this book.
These simple but profound Principles took 40 years to perfect. They were refined and evolved over that time. Each time Dalio and his partners encountered a new problem or challenge, they tried to find the underlying principle at work and tried to learn from their pain and struggle.
Dalio has been called the “Da Vinci” of investing, but his knowledge base spreads much wider than the world economy. He is a bold and independent thinker with unusual and refreshingly grounded ideas on how to manage and grow a successful company as well as on how to live a fuller life.
Dalio's principles will inspire any would-be entrepreneur and anyone who wants to find practical ways to make better decisions, deal with reality, and improve his or her lot in life. His no-nonsense, logical, and fire-tested strategies are useful to improve your ability to study, think clearly, and get ahead in business, as well as any other sphere of your life.
Reading is primarily an investment of your time with the aim of gaining useful knowledge and perspective. However, it's often true that people start out reading a long book with all the best intentions, but when life gets in the way, there's never enough time to finish it. As such, reading our summary is the perfect way to introduce you to the full material and grasp the essential insights of Ray Dalio’s life-changing book, Principles.
The best-quality summaries on Amazon, guaranteed
Team of professional native-English writers and editors (a huge issue on Amazon; check the reviews of ANY other summary book company to see for yourself)
Engaged CEO and responsive team committed to your personal growth and making your reading experience superb
Bonus Power Insights gives you the main takeaways to keep top-of-mind
Bonus 30-Day Action Plan to implement the book’s knowledge to your daily life
Our summaries are crafted for busy high-achievers who still have the insatiable appetite to keep learning and growing. We only curate summaries of books we adamantly believe have the highest potential for personal-growth. Simply put, our summaries provide the fastest way to increase perspective and productivity, guaranteed.
Our team has singled out the key concepts and trimmed out all the rest, allowing you to digest the author's core message in a fraction of the time.
76 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 25, 2018
445 people are currently reading
231 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 14, 2024
Great summary and fantastic principles. Easy to digest! 9.5/10. Key takeaways from "personal principles":
1) Embrace Reality and Deal With It:
You have nothing to fear from knowing the truth. Accept that there are things you can change, and others you can't. Focus on what you can change.
My interpretation is that working efficiently means designing the things you can change optimally given the unavoidable circumstances and natural laws of life. Change within first, as it's easier than changing the outside world.
2) Follow 5-Step Process towards Success:
Can be summarized in 4 steps, in my opinion
- Have clear goals
- Identify problems and root problem
- Design plan
- Push through (Execute)
My POV: Simple but not easy. You need to be systematic enough to sit down and implement these steps. Start broadly when defining your goals, then define specific subgoals. I'd leave out the 2nd step and design action plans towards the nearest sub-goal. Most often, it suffices to write down broad action plans and leave the details to my intuition. This more lenient approach only works if you have experience with goal-setting and implementation. Pushing through should be made easy via routines and joyful execution design (e.g., via reward systems). Resort to discipline when joy can't carry you further, only! This will not deplete your mental resources as quickly.
3) Be Radically Open-Minded
Be aware of your ego and blind spots when making decisions. You can't be the most knowledgeable, strongest, most suitable person for every single task, so accept that others might know things you don't. Ego is an instinctive, deeply rooted system that may occlude the truth. Let facts speak first, cool down before important decisions, and strive.
4) People Are Wired Differently
Among the things that aren't changeable are certain brain structures. I.e., have people with the desired brain structure / talents do the tasks they are best at. Also, accept that some tasks are better delegated than executed by oneself. That doesn't mean you can't adapt, but you wouldn't have a basketball player be a jockey, would you? Training will only get you so far.
5) Make Decisions Effectively
- Eliminate hindering emotions
- Get all the data
- Synthesize to draw the most important conclusion
- Weight sub-decisions adequately to fit goal dimension
- See the big picture: Consider decisions a bet with expected value and risk (standard dev.)
- Prioritize must-dos
- Simplify decisions (e.g., via scenarios)
Fantastic value-time ratio. Would recommend the first part (personal principles) to anyone, the second one (work principles) to business leaders. 9.5/10
1) Embrace Reality and Deal With It:
You have nothing to fear from knowing the truth. Accept that there are things you can change, and others you can't. Focus on what you can change.
My interpretation is that working efficiently means designing the things you can change optimally given the unavoidable circumstances and natural laws of life. Change within first, as it's easier than changing the outside world.
2) Follow 5-Step Process towards Success:
Can be summarized in 4 steps, in my opinion
- Have clear goals
- Identify problems and root problem
- Design plan
- Push through (Execute)
My POV: Simple but not easy. You need to be systematic enough to sit down and implement these steps. Start broadly when defining your goals, then define specific subgoals. I'd leave out the 2nd step and design action plans towards the nearest sub-goal. Most often, it suffices to write down broad action plans and leave the details to my intuition. This more lenient approach only works if you have experience with goal-setting and implementation. Pushing through should be made easy via routines and joyful execution design (e.g., via reward systems). Resort to discipline when joy can't carry you further, only! This will not deplete your mental resources as quickly.
3) Be Radically Open-Minded
Be aware of your ego and blind spots when making decisions. You can't be the most knowledgeable, strongest, most suitable person for every single task, so accept that others might know things you don't. Ego is an instinctive, deeply rooted system that may occlude the truth. Let facts speak first, cool down before important decisions, and strive.
4) People Are Wired Differently
Among the things that aren't changeable are certain brain structures. I.e., have people with the desired brain structure / talents do the tasks they are best at. Also, accept that some tasks are better delegated than executed by oneself. That doesn't mean you can't adapt, but you wouldn't have a basketball player be a jockey, would you? Training will only get you so far.
5) Make Decisions Effectively
- Eliminate hindering emotions
- Get all the data
- Synthesize to draw the most important conclusion
- Weight sub-decisions adequately to fit goal dimension
- See the big picture: Consider decisions a bet with expected value and risk (standard dev.)
- Prioritize must-dos
- Simplify decisions (e.g., via scenarios)
Fantastic value-time ratio. Would recommend the first part (personal principles) to anyone, the second one (work principles) to business leaders. 9.5/10
September 24, 2018
Book hit the nail on the head
This book hit the nail on the head of what I was looking for in a summary of such a good book. First, it gave a summary of each chapter so it still preserved the structure of the original book's content. It also included an overview in the beginning that let me quickly understand all the principles as a whole. At the end it offers an implementation plan on how to actually implement all these concepts to my life. And another bonus that I wasn't expecting was that the summary included well written short stories that applied the principles to real life scenarios. It combined all these elements and still made everything flow so I was able to get Dalio's message in the macro, as a whole and also in the micro with each detailed chapter. This is now my favorite summary book publisher.
This book hit the nail on the head of what I was looking for in a summary of such a good book. First, it gave a summary of each chapter so it still preserved the structure of the original book's content. It also included an overview in the beginning that let me quickly understand all the principles as a whole. At the end it offers an implementation plan on how to actually implement all these concepts to my life. And another bonus that I wasn't expecting was that the summary included well written short stories that applied the principles to real life scenarios. It combined all these elements and still made everything flow so I was able to get Dalio's message in the macro, as a whole and also in the micro with each detailed chapter. This is now my favorite summary book publisher.
May 9, 2022
Life Principles for EVERYONE!
Yes I am a long time serial entrepreneur however Ray's Life Principles are truly for EVERYONE! His 5 Step Decision Making Process not only applies to businesses but to schools, universities, government organizations, etc. If our current President, Congress and the Senate practiced them we would not be in the debacle we are seeing! His GETTING TO THE ROOT CAUSE is especially important to moving a business or country forward.
Yes I am a long time serial entrepreneur however Ray's Life Principles are truly for EVERYONE! His 5 Step Decision Making Process not only applies to businesses but to schools, universities, government organizations, etc. If our current President, Congress and the Senate practiced them we would not be in the debacle we are seeing! His GETTING TO THE ROOT CAUSE is especially important to moving a business or country forward.
November 10, 2024
Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, offers a deeply personal yet widely applicable set of principles for life and business. His advice on decision-making and personal values is valuable for anyone interested in strong leadership practices.
May 2, 2020
Great Read
I read the full version of Principles. This summary hits every major point, without a lot of the extra detail the original had. Great read!
I read the full version of Principles. This summary hits every major point, without a lot of the extra detail the original had. Great read!
July 27, 2020
Insightful quick read
A clean, concise quick read that has many levels of key takeaways. Entrepreneurial in spirit and personal in tone. Drawn from years of Ray’s experience.
A clean, concise quick read that has many levels of key takeaways. Entrepreneurial in spirit and personal in tone. Drawn from years of Ray’s experience.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews