Page 437 - Ray Dalio - Principles

14 Do What You Set Out

to Do

The organization, like the individual, has to push through to
results in order to succeed—this is step five in the 5-Step

Process.
While recently cleaning up a huge pile of work products

from the 1980s and 1990s, I came across boxes and boxes full
of research. There were thousands of pages, most covered with
my scribbles, and I realized that they represented just a
fraction of the effort I’d put in. At our fortieth-year celebration
I was given copies of the almost ten thousand Bridgewater

Daily Observations that we’d published. Every one of them
expressed our deepest thinking and research about markets and
economies. I also stumbled across the manuscript of an eight-
hundred-page book that I wrote but then got too busy to
publish, and countless other memos and letters to clients,
research reports, and versions of the book you’re reading now.
Why did I do all these things? Why do others work so hard to

achieve their goals?

From what I can see, we do it for different reasons. For me,
the main reason is that I can visualize the results of pushing
through so intensely that I experience the thrill of success even
while I’m still struggling to achieve it. Similarly, I can
visualize the tragic results of not pushing through. I am also
motivated by a sense of responsibility; I have a hard time

letting people I care about down. But that’s just what’s true for
me. Others describe their motivation as attachment to the
community and its mission. Some do it for approval and some
do it for financial rewards. All these are perfectly acceptable