Reading Note 1 for《Principles》

This is the first reading note for the book Principles, I will output one note per week until I finish reading this book.

The simple introduction to Principles

Principles

Due to Jianglang's strong recommendation, I bought the English original version of Principles which was written by Ray Dalio. He is a successful entrepreneur and investor. He abstracted some general principles from his life and working, and he strongly believed that his principles can help others be successful. It sounds like the Education of Millionaires. But it is reported that the feedback from readers all over the world was very hot and positive, therefore I decided to learn that book.

ray dalio

Philosophical questions

Everyone is unique, therefore the same rules can not be used for everyone directly. But Dalio summarized one fundamental rule fitting for everyone: Think for yourself to decide,

1. What you want.
2. What is true
3. What you should do to achieve #1 in light of #2

Actually these questions are not easy to answer, they are abstract and little philosophical. Most of us can't anwser these questions at once. I hope I could answer them and find my own principles in the future when I learn more from this book.

Learning Principles Algorithm

The book outlines a very clear flow chart:

Applying Principles Algorithm

Algorithmic decision-making

Another inspirational thinking is systemizing your decision making. He made many efforts to transform his process of making decisions into specific steps like computer algorithms. He thought this process is called systemizing or digitizing. I am really curious about this method. I will focus this technique when I meet with it in his book.

The main organization of Principles

The book is separated into 3 parts:

• Part 1: Where I'm coming from
• Part 2: Life Principles
• Part 3: Working Principles

The book's main contents are located in Part2 and Part3: all kinds of principles from his life and working. But why the author put his private story in the first part? I think he wanted his story to be a good case study for better mastering how to apply principles to everyone's unique background.