Page 211 - Ray Dalio - Principles

1. The left hemisphere reasons sequentially, analyzes details, and excels at linear analysis.
“Left-brained” or “linear” thinkers who are analytically strong are often called “bright.”

2. The right hemisphere thinks across categories, recognizes themes, and synthesizes the big
picture. “Right-brained” or “lateral” thinkers with more street smarts are often called
“smart.”
The diagram on the left summarizes the qualities of “right-brained” and “left-brained”
thinking types.

Most people tend to get more of their instructions from one side than the other and they
have trouble understanding people who get theirs from the opposite side. Our experience has
been that left-brained folks tend to see right-brained folks as “spacey” or “abstract,” while
right-brained thinkers tend to find left-brained thinkers “literal” or “narrow.” I have seen
wonderful results occur when people know where their own and others’ inclinations lie, realize
that both ways of thinking are invaluable, and assign responsibilities accordingly.
g. Understand how much the brain can and cannot change. This brings us to an important question: Can
31
we change? We can all learn new facts and skills, but can we also learn to change how we are
inclined to think? The answer is a qualified yes.
Brain plasticity is what allows your brain to change its “softwiring.” For a long time,
scientists believed that after a certain critical period in childhood, most of our brain’s
neurological connections were fixed and highly unlikely to change. But recent research has
suggested that a wide variety of practices—from physical exercise to studying to meditation—
can lead to physical and physiological changes in our brains that affect our abilities to think
and form memories. In a study of Buddhist monks who had practiced more than ten thousand
hours of meditation, researchers at the University of Wisconsin measured significantly higher
levels of gamma waves in their brains; these waves are associated with perception and problem
solving. 32

That doesn’t mean the brain is infinitely flexible. If you have a preference for a certain way
of thinking, you might be able to train yourself to operate another way and find that easier to
do over time, but you’re very unlikely to change your underlying preference. Likewise, you
may be able to train yourself to be more creative, but if you’re not naturally creative, there’s
likely a limit to what you can do. That is simply reality, so we all might as well accept it and
learn how to deal with it. There are coping techniques that we can use—for example, the
creative, disorganized person who is likely to lose track of time can develop the habit of using
alarms; the person who isn’t good at some type of thinking can train himself to rely on the
thinking of others who are better at it. The best way to change is through doing mental
exercises. As with physical exercise, this can be painful unless you enlist the habit loop
discussed earlier to connect the rewards to the actions, “rewiring” your brain to love learning
and beneficial change.

Remember that accepting your weaknesses is contrary to the instincts of those parts of your
brain that want to hold on to the illusion that you are perfect. Doing the things that will reduce
your instinctual defensiveness takes practice, and requires operating in an environment that
reinforces open-mindedness.
As you’ll see when we get into Work Principles, I’ve developed a number of tools and
techniques that help overcome that resistance, individually and across organizations. Instead of
expecting yourself or others to change, I’ve found that it’s often most effective to acknowledge
one’s weaknesses and create explicit guardrails against them. This is typically a faster and
higher-probability path to success.

4.4 Find out what you and others are like.

Because of the biases with which we are wired, our self-assessments (and our assessments of
others) tend to be highly inaccurate. Psychometric assessments are much more reliable. They
are important in helping explore how people think during the hiring process and throughout
employment. Though psychometric assessments cannot fully replace speaking with people and