Principles: Life and Work

by Ray Dalio

Only very rarely do I hear someone recuse himself from offering an opinion because they aren’t capable of forming a good one in a particular area.

rushing into ad hoc solutions while kicking the proverbial can down the road is a “path to slaughter.”

Security controls should not be taken personally by the people being checked, just like a teller shouldn’t view the bank counting the money in the drawer (rather than just accepting the teller’s count) as an indication that the bank thinks the teller is dishonest.

auditing procedures should not be made known to those being audited. (This is one of our few exceptions to radical transparency.)

Beware of rubber-stamping. When a person’s role involves reviewing or auditing a high volume of transactions or things that other people are doing, there’s a real risk of rubber-stamping. One particularly risky example is expense approvals. Make sure you have ways to audit the auditors.

Constantly think about how to produce leverage.

I personally assume things will take about one and a half times as long and cost about one and a half times as much because that’s what I’ve typically experienced.

Why did I do all these things? Why do others work so hard to achieve their goals? From what I can see, we do it for different reasons. For me, the main reason is that I can visualize the results of pushing through so intensely that I experience the thrill of success even while I’m still struggling to achieve it.

Those with more creativity invent ways to do things more effectively (for instance by finding good people, good technologies, and/or good designs). Those with more character are better able to wrestle with their challenges and demands. And those with more wisdom can maintain their equanimity by going to the higher level and looking down on themselves and their challenges to properly prioritize, realistically design, and make sensible choices.

Winston Churchill hit the nail on the head when he said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

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