Apart from some nonsense appeals to nature to justify some shakey philosophy, and being awfully repetitive, this is a good book with an important message. Take your ego out of decision making. ( )

This is much more than a book about Principles and a large amount about how to operate a business and make decisions. Lots of great wisdom and examples with Bridgewater are included. ( )

This book by Ray Dalio is good. I won't go so far as to say it is excellent because it is long, and you will find some repetition in the book.

Ray Dalio divided the book into three sections - his autobiography (of sorts), principles for life, and principles for business.

I found the first section most interesting. This is where he described his journey, his mistakes, and his successes.

The second section - principles for life - is superb as well. When he reached the third section, I believe he faltered. The principles are excellent. There is no doubt about this. But, I felt that most people don't apply all of them. I assume he applied all the principles but did not explain where he failed. This section was a bit tedious, and I quickly went through the last chapters.

If the book was shorter by about 50 pages, it would be more effective. ( )

This is hands down one of the best reads this year!

The book is divided into three parts: the life story of the author, Life Principles, and Work Principles. Even though I find the first part exciting and inspiring, the actual value for me lies in the last two parts. Ray Dalio has distilled the principles from all the lessons learned through his quite extraordinary life and career and shared it to the world.

I could especially relate to work principles. While reading them, I've found some of the matching principles which I had to discover the hard way - by trial and error and came to similar conclusions, giving even more credibility to other principles from my point of view and a feeling of urgency to try and implement them.

It is very rare to find such a concentration of knowledge in one book. Having this in mind this book might be one of the most impactful reads, especially if you have the power and will to change things in the organization for the better.

The main concepts: idea meritocracy, believability, radical truth, and transparency and many others already found a way into my daily life and our organization. I believe that in the long run, it can make an enormous impact on both. ( )

3/31/22

I think this might be the best book I’ve read in all of 2017. Lots of practical thoughts on life and how those apply to work. So many good takeaways that I don’t even know where to start in implementing. I think this could easily be a book that I go through several times, and focus on pieces of it at a time.

Also fantastic advice for running a business. And it was cool to see how all those things were based on how we should live our lives. ( )

Boring autobiography. ( )

An astoundingly good book! By far the best part for me is the first part, Life Principles. The second part, Work Principles, whilst still deep, profound and insightful is also sightly tedious as a read. Work Principles is much better accessed as either a reference or as a manual, particularly if you are actually in the process of building an organisation. Life Principles is, I think, one of those books that will survive re-reading, much like Stephe Covey's 7 Habits. ( )

This book isn't perfect, but I'm glad I read it.

Basically three parts: 1) background on Dalio and Bridgewater (interesting, but only if you're into biographies or accounts of important companies); 2) advice for how to live one's own life 3) principles for engineering and managing a company. 2 is probably of the widest appeal, and 3 is what I found the most interesting (although also the most hit-or-miss).

I'm friends with an ex-Bridgewater employee, and I knew of Dalio and Bridgewater but not in any great detail. The biography was interesting to me, but didn't really go into great detail; it's maybe on par with a long-form magazine article about the man and his firm.

Dalio's advice for individuals and companies basically boils down to harnessing the power of feedback, iteration, and improvement in response to failure. Simple to say, but hard to implement, and much of his advice was how to create systems (individually or for an organization) to accomplish this. For an individual, the challenge is primarily psychological -- being able to reflect on one's actions at a higher meta level than just doing the work itself, because you're always both the do-er and the manager. For organizations, the challenge is essentially the central problems of economics -- aligning incentives, culture, and unintended consequences. This is where he had some of the best concrete advice, about tools Bridgewater developed and used (and which he says he will release), and also about the need for greater organizational controls once he wasn't directly running things. I don't think he went far enough in admitting the problems with the bridgewater model, and lack of applicability -- it only really works when everyone has aligned incentives, which I believe is only possible in small groups or in organizations throwing off so much cash that no one is concerned about scarcity -- the Bridgewater management style would not be a viable way to run a large retail empire like Wal-mart, and he didn't seem to understand or admit this.

Overall, it's a good book. The individual principles are good to have in one's toolbox, and the organizational structuring advice is good if not taken as gospel or in isolation. I do wish I'd worked at Bridgewater when Dalio was there, to see this stuff happen in realtime, but maybe I'll be able to implement some of these tools with my own teams in the future. ( )

Imagine for a moment you were able to sit down for long conversation with a wise old man, who happened to have unimaginable success. That is this book. Ray Dalio is one who likes to think, and here he outlines his principles.

The book truly is three books. The first is a concise biography. The second are his personal (individual) principles for life. And the third are the principles he incorporates in his company, his corporate principles.

It is a book of intense practical advice. Most of what he says feels like sounds "common sense," which means it feels true, yet is hardly common. I will say, undoubtedly, he has cornered the market on identifying truth. And let me explain what I mean by that. Bridgewater, Ray Dalio's company, which he built from nothing out his 2 bedroom apartment, is one of the largest most successful hedge funds in the world. They deal with making money, which is a straightforward black or white enterprise. You know very quickly whether you've made a good decision or a bad one - there don't seem to be gray areas. And this is where Dalio's approach seems most effective, namely what he calls an "idea meritocracy - radical truth, radical transparency:" a phrase he repeats a lot.

This comes from an interview and feels very similar to the book:

The key to our success has been to have a real idea meritocracy. To have a successful idea meritocracy, you have to do three things: 1. Put your honest thoughts out on the table, 2. Have thoughtful disagreements in which people are willing to shift their opinions as they learn, and 3. Have agreed-upon ways of deciding if disagreements remain so that you can move beyond them without resentments. And to do this well, you need to be radically truthful and radically transparent, by which I mean you need to allow people to see and say almost anything. If you're not transparent, people won't know enough about what's going on to have good, independent opinions, and if you don't expect the truth of people, you'll never know whether or not they're telling you want they really think.

Other ideas that are noteworthy (and have likely influenced the world) are:
-- computer aided decision making. Dalio started using computers way back to aid in objective decision making, utilizing algorithm optimization years before most people had computers in their homes.
-- diversified asset portfolios. No doubt others did this too, but it seems like Dalio and Bridgewater have come close to perfecting it.
-- a systematic approach to group interactions, including making baseball cards for employees.
-- rewarding failure. This encourages employees to not only come forward when mistakes are made (rather than hide them), and take risks, which leads to growth.

If interested, you might find his TED talk, which is a great intro. Or you can also download the e-book for free on your phone. The app is called oddly enough Principles. My only complaints with the book are many of the ideas are redundant because you get similar or the same thing in all three books. Second, it can be pretty dry. That being said, the advice is pretty solid.

If you have interest in making money, if you have interest in finding truth, if you lead a company or group of people, I'd recommend this book. Good solid advice worth hearing!
( )

Stopped after reading 1/2 of both part I and part II.

I didn't like the structure of the book. The biographical part is too long and contains many mentions to specifics of Dalio's investing past that I was personally totally uninterested in. The principles part has some reasonable ideas but after listening to a handful, it just starts becoming a list of platitudes without much insight, similar to how some "values" statements are at corporations.

One that I did enjoy is "look to nature to learn how reality works" - the idea there was legitimately unique and Dalio did a good job of explaining why it makes sense to him. That said, it wasn't enough to get me to read the rest of the book. ( )

There’s a lot of good information in this book. I appreciate how clearly it is structured, with a granular table of contents for each section and deep-level headings within chapters.

The book is written as an insight into what works for the author, as well as a sort of handbook for the author’s company, Bridgewater. It covers everything from the author’s personal principles, to the work principles that have served him well over the years.

I didn’t connect with this book. There weren’t really any “aha!” or “oh, wow, that’s neat!” moments while reading it. Most of what I read just made sense. There were a few interesting takeaways, like treating processes as machines and constantly evaluating them. I’m not sure if I am not at the right life/professional stage for this book – some of it could have been more interesting back when I was a consultant. Ultimately, I’ll probably treat this as a sort of handbook that I can refer to for breaking down problems and how to directly tackle issues.

As for who I’d recommend this to — I think anyone interested in strategy, management, but also those who are looking at being more direct with themselves. ( )

Every company should have some explicitly written down principles such as this. Preferably exactly those laid out in this book.
Would make it easier to choose an attractive employer too that offers sensible principles.

Ray Dalio seems like an excellent and deeply insightful person, no wonder Taleb likes him. Hope to get my hands on Dalio's future stuff (books, tools...) ( )

I really wanted to like this book. And it has some good ideas in it. But I think Ray Dalio is a little too in love with his principles, and I fear it blinds him to the possibility that his ideas my not be as readily exploitable by others as he may wish.

The book is part the biography of Ray Dalio, and his is quite candid about his successes and failures. I take no issue with that section. He has been wildly successful, and he can point to many learning experiences that lead to his success.

It's when he extracts general principles from these experiences and explores their implementation in his own successful investment firm that things start to get a little less coherent. The principles appeared to me to fall into three broad categories: intuitively obvious, not intuitively obvious (and therefore needed more evidence to be accepted as "true"), and wrong (that is, with a little thought I can come up with counterexamples from my own experiences that show the principle does not have broad applicability).

The first category is easy to follow. It's the second and third that worry me. When one makes a claim about a general principle, it's okay if there are situations or edge conditions where that principle is not applicable - but if you want to make a broad claim, you need to have lots of evidence. One successful business in one industry run by one person is not enough data to generalize from - the reader has no way to determine how much of that success is due to the simple combination of factors. And the author has no incentive to look for and test their claims outside of their realm of expertise. I'm no statistician myself, but that was an obvious flaw to me.

In fact, the example of a "wrong" principle that sticks in my mind is one that deals with a statistical fallacy and healthcare. Two issues here: if he makes statistical inference errors that I can identify when he reaches outside of his purported area of expertise, should I not also suspect the inferences he makes in ALL areas outside of his expertise? And if I can (accurately) describe his mistakes as fundamental or simple, should they not have been caught and corrected by others in the editing and proofreading process?

(NOTE: the mistake I'm referring to is later in the book, regarding a health scare the author suffered. He has some rare issue discovered by a screening test, consulted multiple doctors about the treatment with different expected outcomes, and ultimately ended up doing nothing because it was a non-issue. This sort of statistical mistake is handled by Nassim Taleb in his books, and well understood by statisticians who use Bayes Theorem. Also, the author makes no mention of the drag on the healthcare system that would occur if his principle were broadly applied)

( )

Ray Dalio founder of the world’s most successful hedge fund – Bridgewater ; pens down his “principles of success” in this semi – autobiography / self -help book . The first part is more on the personal front and the second half is all about these principles – but here is where it falls short . It gets very monotonous at times with overlapping “rules” and subsets i.e rule 3.1.4 ; which to me felt like no-brainers at times . I was expecting more of part one – visionary insights , maverick trades stories etc and not generic advice you give teenagers ; also the book lacks flow and abruptly shifts gears at times. ( )

I confess I am biased and have always tried to pursue the goals of transparency in a commercial or workplace setting. I think Ray is a good 20 years ahead of me.

I can attest to the utility of his ideas and his experience and the tone of his book comes through as a compassionate teacher. Take what you like from it, leave what you don't. There is one section/item where Ray recounts how he dealt with a diagnosis of a serious medical condition. His method of how to deal with it is pretty common sense, but I believe only a very small percentage of the population would pursue this course. It is the single most important thing I have ever read as a piece of advice and I sent it to many of my friends and colleagues. For that one anecdote alone I would give the book 5 stars but there is an abundance of wisdom in this book. ( )

Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, "Would an idiot do that?" And if they would, I do not do that thing. ( )

The first hundred pages I read very closely. I skimmed the rest.

Dalio is an obsessively competitive person and he carefully architects how he succeeds.

His mental discipline for success is extremely rigorous, I'll say impossible.

For all the billions of dollars he has earned I don't understand what tangible assets he's created.
This book may be the wrong source for what I seek.

Dalio compares himself to Steve Jobs. Jobs developed computer devices that expand and enrich the lives of millions of people. Dalio managed the most successful hedge fund making rich people richer. Both are wealthy and Jobs created thousands of jobs and enriched consumers lives, I don't know what Dalio invented, it's all advanced mathematics of hedge funds. A few thousand people work at Dalio's Bridgewater Capital. All the clients are American elites.

While Steve Jobs' iPhone is used by rural Chinese.

I think Dalio's goals are contribute to making excessive greed an admirable quality in the USA. His competitive nature makes for a life filled with success and no meaning.

If you are ultra competitive, greedy alpha perfectionist, this is the book for you.

I'm an artist who seeks beauty and meaning, so this book rates low on my scale. ( )

Best business book I’ve ever read. Extremely practical approach. Not easy to implement. ( )

test

A review of Ray Dalio's 2011 publication, “Principles.” I read the first 55 pages; the second half of the document is like a principles appendix.

Summary

Three Parts:

1) The Importance of Principles
2) My Most Fundamental Life Principles
3) My Management Principles

Principles, a definition:

"Your values are what you consider important, literally what you “value.” Principles are what allow you to live a life consistent with those values. Principles connect your values to your actions; they are beacons that guide your actions, and help you successfully deal with the laws of reality. It is to your principles that you turn when you face hard choices."

Risks with adopting principles:

"Adopting pre-packaged principles without much thought exposes you to the risk of inconsistency with your true values."

Design Process:
* Set Goals
* Identify and don’t tolerate problems
* Diagnose the problems to the root causes
* Design a plan for eliminating the problems
* Do what is set out in the plan

Two most important aspects of a successful enterprise:
* Culture
* People

Interpretation

I like what Ray’s put together here. I see it as the businessman’s approach to Holistic Goal Setting.

Dave Jacke says that events are teachers, not people; this is mirrored in Ray’s principles.

The Gurdjieff Work has an emphasis on conscious labor and intentional suffering, as well self observation, and that we’re somewhere in the middle of a greater energetic food chain. These ideas are mirrored in Ray’s values of progress, pain, and objectivity.

I feel that Ray has underestimated the importance of emotion and intuition, but then again, he has different goals.

I also think that Ray’s interpretation of money - that how much money someone is able to earn is roughly correspondent to their ability to fulfill the needs of the world. Ray can feel that there’s a hole in his logic here as well, in his later comparison of wants versus desires. One of our issues is that money tends to feed desire above all else, and the world isn’t composed of progression-oriented people like Ray.

I appreciate that Ray turns to nature for insight.

Overall, I think it’s a great and useful document, although Ray’s time in the world of finance has led him to a worldview that lacks a certain nuance and aesthetic. ( )