"Principles" Book Notes

1. One must know how to deal with not knowing.
2. Stages of Life
   1. Learning; am dependent on others | teens
   2. Working; people are increasingly dependent on you | 20s
   3. Helping other people be successful | 60s
3. Think for yourself while being open-minded & clearheaded
4. One must decide what he/she:
   1. Desires
   2. What is true
   3. How to achieve 1 in light of 2
5. Ray learnt his principles over a lifetime of making mistakes and reflecting on them
6. To find principles: audacious goals -> failure -> learn -> improve -> set even more audacious goals
7. Transcendental meditations benefitted Dalio by producing calm open-mindedness for clear & creative thinking.
8. Bet on a recession in 1981- was very, very wrong; had to let go of employees, borrow money, sell car
9. to be open minded:
   1. Seek out smart & disagreeable people
   2. Understand why they disagree
   3. Know when to not have an opinion
   4. Develop, test and systemwide principles
   5. Balance Risks & minimize downside
10. Hard & creative work can bring anything but not everything one may want.
11. Most people are more emotional than logical
12. One has more "friends" when she/he is up than when down, because most like winners & shun losers
13. A few uncorrelated streams of income is better than one; emphasis on uncorrelated
14. Don’t judge; understand.
15. Embrace mistakes; Dalio even made a log.
16. Ray made baseball cards for all of his employees.
17. Be resilient & antifragile.
18. Try, fail, diagnose, redesign, try again.
19. Having the basics is most important.
20. Embrace & deal with reality.