15 Work and Life Principles to Live By

15 Life Principles from “Principles” by Ray Dalio

Parker Klein ✌️

Published in

TwosApp

8 min readJul 21, 2024

These principles came from the book “Principles” by Ray Dalio.

“Principles” is an excellent book that has have a tremendous impact on how I live my life and run a technology business.

1. There is no such thing as failure

It is okay to make mistakes but unacceptable not to identify, analyze, and learn from them.

Remind the people you are probing that problems and mistakes are fuel for improvement.

Audacious goals -> failure -> learning principles -> improving -> more audacious goals.

To be a successful entrepreneur one has to be an independent thinker who correctly bets against the consensus which means being painfully wrong a fair amount.

If you punish errors, people will hide them which will lead to even bigger and more costly errors.

The key is to fail, learn, and improve quickly.

Adaptation through rapid trial and error is invaluable.

If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential.

Every mistake you make can teach you something so there’s no end to learning.

You must stretch if you want to get strong.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10000 ways that don’t work.” — Thomas Edison

2. Never stop learning

You always have the right to have and ask questions.

Don’t have anything to do with close-minded, inexperienced people.

Watch out for people who think it’s embarrassing not to know.

Understand that the ability to deal with not knowing is far more powerful than knowing.

Be radically open minded.

Embrace the power of asking: ‘What don’t I know, and what should I do about it?’

Don’t be a perfectionist.

If you look back on yourself a year ago and aren’t shocked by how stupid you were, you haven’t learned much.

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” — Henry Ford

3. Don’t shy away from hard work

Force yourself and the people who work for you to do difficult things.

You will get what you deserve overtime.

Hold yourself and others accountable.

A hero is someone who found or achieved or did something beyond the normal range of achievement and who has given his life to something bigger than himself or other than himself.

It is a fundamental law of nature that in order to gain strength one has to push one’s limits, which is painful.

The challenges you face will test and strengthen you.

Don’t let pain stand in the way of progress.

Putting comfort ahead of success produces worse results for everyone.

“I never dreamt of success. I worked for it.” — Estée Lauder

4. Empower the people who work for you

Don’t worry if your people like you; worry about whether you are helping your people to be great.

Care about the people who work for you.

Know what makes your people tick, because people are your most important resource.

Understand that you and the people you manage will go through a process of personal evolution.

Provide constant feedback to put the learning in perspective.

When criticizing, try to make helpful suggestions.

Recognize that while most people prefer compliments over criticisms, there is nothing more valuable than accurate criticisms.

The greatest success you can have as the person in charge is to orchestrate others to do things well without you.

Be generous and expect generosity from others.

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” — Bill Gates

5. Make a plan and stick to it

Know what you want and stick to it if you believe it’s right, even if others want to take you in another direction.

Communicate the plan clearly. Have agreed-upon goals and tasks that everyone knows.

Don’t act before thinking. Take the time to come up with a game plan.

Remember the 80/20 rule and know what the key 20% is.

Wise people stick with sound fundamentals through the ups and downs.

Don’t worry about whether you like your situation or not. Life doesn’t give a damn about your life. It’s up to you to connect what you want with what you need to do to get it and then find the courage to carry it through.

Great planners who don’t execute their plans go nowhere.

“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” — Yogi Berra

6. Be true to yourself

Don’t try to please everyone.

Don’t let fears of what others think of you stand in your way.

People are happiest when they can be themselves.

Don’t worry about looking good — worry instead about achieving your goals.

It doesn’t matter what you do with your life as long as you are doing what is consistent with your nature and your aspirations.

Have the courage to be true to your truest self, no matter what other people want you to be.

People who are one way on the inside and another on the outside become conflicted and often lose touch with their own values.

Aligning what you say with what you’re thinking and what you think with what you feel will make you much happier and much more successful.

Worry about doing the right thing, not about what other people think about you.

“Be bold, be brave enough to be your true self.” — Queen Latifah

7. Seek the truth over being right

Just be right, don’t care if the right answer comes from you.

Seek out the smartest people who disagree with you so you can try to understand their reasoning.

Know how to react appropriately to the information available at each point in time.

Finding the path to success is at least as dependent on coming up with the right questions as coming up with answers.

Be curious enough to want to understand how the people who see things differently from you came to see them that way.

Don’t get hung up on your views of how things should be because you will miss out on learning how they really are.

Replace your attachment to always being right with the joy of learning what’s true.

Realize you have nothing to fear from knowing the truth.

If you can’t tolerate being wrong, you won’t grow, you’ll make yourself and everyone around you miserable, and your work environment will be marked by petty backbiting and malevolent barbs rather than by a healthy, honest search for truth.

“Face reality as it is … not as you wish it to be.” — Jack Welch

8. Spend time reflecting

Bad times coupled with good reflections provide some of the best lessons.

Pain + Reflection = Progress.

Remember to reflect when you experience pain.

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” — Peter Drucker

9. Hire right

Hire right because the consequences from hiring wrong are huge.

Ask for past reviews and check references.

Look for people who have lots of great questions.

Hire people you want to share your life with.

Make sure candidates interview you.

Find the right fit between the role and the person.

Pay for the person, not for the job.

“People are not your most important asset. The right people are.” — Jim Collins

10. Focus on what is in your control

Whatever circumstances life brings you, you will be more likely to succeed and find happiness if you take responsibility for making your decisions well instead of complaining about things being beyond your control.

Consciously develop habits that will make doing the things that are good for you habitual.

Your greatest challenges will be having your thoughtful higher level you manage your emotional lower level you.

The state of mind that you bring to the process makes all the difference.

“I can only control my own performance. If I do my best, then I can feel good at the end of the day.” — Michael Phelps

11. Take responsibility for your life

The most important decision is who will be responsible.

Don’t blame bad outcomes on anyone but yourself.

If it is your meeting to run, manage the conversation.

Nothing can stop you from succeeding if you have flexibility and self accountability.

The quality of your life will depend on the choices you make in painful moments.

“The price of greatness is responsibility.” — Winston Churchill

12. Set big audacious goals

A proper goal is something that you really need to achieve.

Write down your plan.

Organize the organization around goals not tasks.

Have clear goals.

Visualize what you and others must do in the future so you will reach your goals.

“People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.” — Earl Nightingale

13. Analyze before making decisions

Logic, reason, and common sense must trump everything else in decision-making.

Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.

Strategic thinking requires both diagnosis and design.

Focus on the what is before deciding what to do about it.

Accurately diagnose the problems to get at their root causes.

Don’t believe everything you hear.

It helps to step back to gain perspective and sometimes defer a decision until some time passes.

Listening to uninformed people is worse than having no answers at all.

Don’t act before thinking.

“Think before you act and act on what you believe.” — Bo Bennett

14. Protect your time and relationships

Prioritize what you spend time on and who you spend it with.

The life that you will live is most simply the result of habits you develop.

Don’t tolerate dishonesty.

Numerous studies have shown there is little to no correlation between ones happiness and the amount of money one accumulates yet there is a strong correlation between ones happiness and the quality of ones relationships.

Have fewer things to do by prioritizing and saying no, find the right people to delegate to, improve your productivity.

“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” — Henry David Thoreau

15. Seek out your purpose in life

Our purpose is to evolve and to contribute to evolution in some small way.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and everyone has an important role to play in life.

“The two most important days in life are the day you born and the day you find out why.” — Mark Twain

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