Page 247 - Ray Dalio - Principles

In a nutshell, learning how to make decisions in the best
possible way and learning to have the courage to make them
comes from a) going after what you want, b) failing and

reflecting well through radical open-mindedness, and c)
changing/evolving to become ever more capable and less
fearful. In the final chapter of this section, Learn How to Make
Decisions Effectively, I shared some more granular principles
for how to do all of the above and weigh your options in
specific situations to determine the right path to follow.

You can of course do all of these things alone, but if you’ve

understood anything about the concept of radical open-
mindedness, it should be obvious that going it alone will only
take you so far. We all need others to help us triangulate and
get to the best possible decisions—and to help us see our
weaknesses objectively and compensate for them. More than
anything else, your life is affected by the people around you
and how you interact with each other.

Your ability to get what you want when working with
others who want the same things is much greater than your
ability to get these things by yourself. Yet we haven’t talked
about how groups should operate to be most effective. That’s
what we’ll do in Work Principles.

Work Principles is about people working together. Because

the power of a group is so much greater than the power of an
individual, the principles that follow are likely even more
important than those we covered up to this point. In fact, I
wrote them first and then wrote Life Principles in order to help
others make sense of the approach I was implicitly applying in
running Bridgewater. My Work Principles are basically the
Life Principles you just read, applied to groups. I will show
you, principle by principle, how an actual, practical,

believability-weighted decision-making system converts
independent thinking into effective group decision making. I
believe that such a system can work to make any kind of
organization—business, government, philanthropic—both
more effective and more satisfying to belong to.