Page 219 - Ray Dalio - Principles

quality of your decision making. This is why it always pays to
triangulate your views with people who you know synthesize well.
This raises your chances of having a good synthesis, even if you feel
like you’ve already done it yourself. No sensible person should
reject a believable person’s views without great fear of being wrong.

To synthesize well, you must 1) synthesize the situation at hand,
2) synthesize the situation through time, and 3) navigate levels
effectively.

5.2 Synthesize the situation at hand.

Every day you are faced with an infinite number of things that come
at you. Let’s call them “dots.” To be effective, you need to be able to
tell which dots are important and which dots are not. Some people
go through life collecting all kinds of observations and opinions like
pocket lint, instead of just keeping what they need. They have
“detail anxiety,” worrying about unimportant things.

Sometimes small things can be important—for example, that little
rattle in your car’s engine could just be a loose piece of plastic or it
could be a sign your timing belt is about to snap. The key is having
the higher-level perspective to make fast and accurate judgments on
what the real risks are without getting bogged down in details.

Remember:

a. One of the most important decisions you can make is who you ask questions of.
Make sure they’re fully informed and believable. Find out who is
responsible for whatever you are seeking to understand and then ask
them. Listening to uninformed people is worse than having no
answers at all.

b. Don’t believe everything you hear. Opinions are a dime a dozen and
nearly everyone will share theirs with you. Many will state them as
if they are facts. Don’t mistake opinions for facts.
c. Everything looks bigger up close. In all aspects of life, what’s happening
today seems like a much bigger deal than it will appear in retrospect.
That’s why it helps to step back to gain perspective and sometimes
defer a decision until some time passes.

d. New is overvalued relative to great. For example, when choosing which
movie to watch or what book to read, are you drawn to proven
classics or the newest big thing? In my opinion, it is smarter to
choose the great over the new.