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Principles
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Publisher's Summary
Ray Dalio, one of the world's most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he's developed, refined, and used over the past 40 years to create unique results in both life and business - and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Forty years later Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Dalio himself has been named to Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way Dalio discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater's exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as "an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency". It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio - who grew up an ordinary kid in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood - that he believes are the reason behind his success.
In Principles, Dalio shares what he's learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines. The book's hundreds of practical lessons, which are built around his cornerstones of "radical truth" and "radical transparency", include Dalio laying out the most effective ways for individuals and organizations to make decisions, approach challenges, and build strong teams. He also describes the innovative tools the firm uses to bring an idea meritocracy to life, such as creating "baseball cards" for all employees that distill their strengths and weaknesses and employing computerized decision-making systems to make believability-weighted decisions. While the book brims with novel ideas for organizations and institutions, Principles also offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they're seeking to achieve.
Here, from a man who has been called both "the Steve Jobs of investing" and "the philosopher king of the financial universe" (CIO magazine), is a rare opportunity to gain proven advice unlike anything you'll find in the conventional business press.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- 匿名
- 23-01-2019
good for business owners
really good if you are looking to setup a business with 20-20,000 employees. I personally felt it was a bit culty and didn't like it.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Robin Köhler
- 06-12-2018
Overhyped
Great attempt to distil underlying principles, unfortunately surprisingly irrelevant outside of this kind of organisational structure and area of business.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Melissa H.
- 21-09-2017
AMAZING BOOK
This book was awesome. Great to hear and listen to someone that has had great financial success talk about principles. I would love to be in Ray Dalio inner circle. So much wisdom and knowledge that you can learn from. I'm developing my own principles now while also noting down Rays. Awesome book and many thanks for writing this gem.
8 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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- 匿名
- 07-02-2018
Too lengthy, internal code for BridgeWater's staff
The book can be cut to one-tenth in volume without losing much detail.
The gist of the book is about how the author sees his organizstion as a machine with people as its parts. The principles given in this regard are blueprints without much delving into reasoning. Mostly useful as a code of conduct and practice for BridgeWater people.
I expected much more from this book.
12 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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- Prophetmines
- 23-01-2018
Management consultant soup, not for investors
If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?
A small business growing into a medium size business may appreciate the exhausting list of principles.
Would you ever listen to anything by Ray Dalio again?
If he releases his investing principles, as promised, I'd be very interested. Most buyers would be shocked to hear that this 'investing great' does not write much about investing in this very long book.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
Ray Dalio narrates half the book but a backup narrator is left to churn through a lot of the repetitive sounding chapters.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Disappointing because Ray Dalio has presented his organisational principles and held back on his investing strategies. He posits that to emulate his investing success, others should consider following his work principles. This is most likely an illusion of causality. It is more likely a coincidence that he has been wildly successful in picking market moves as well as instituted a certain type of management, not because of it.
Any additional comments?
Ray Dalio trumpets radical transparency and openness to feedback which is why i don't feel insubordinate in labelling his manuscript a misguided and futile contribution. Ray, you're a legend because of your investing, not your management. Just read your mixed Glassdoor reviews.
6 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- sashko
- 26-09-2017
Complicated data subsets
Would you try another book written by Ray Dalio or narrated by Ray Dalio and Jeremy Bobb ?
Maybe if it was about his trading
You didn’t love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?
The five steps in achieving success are good
Any additional comments?
Overall its just too complicated. There are five goals....or is it seven.....or is it ten....each of them has subset bits of info ie goal 1.1, with then further subset info ie goal 1.1a, then further ie goal 1.1a,1-24.
I ended up getting the kindle book so I could keep track of it all. That was just as complicated only now I could see the full extent of it.
For those who can approach life like an algorithmic trading plan, this book is for you; it's a kind of life algorithm, which, if you can implement it, guarantees success.
6 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Robert
- 07-01-2020
A must read for business and life
Ray Dalio delivers a fact based, life tested manual on how to most effectively operate in business and life while not neglecting your humanity. These ideas are very high level but practical communicated in a logical coherent way across the book. Highly recommended reading/listening.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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- Alain
- 18-11-2019
Get the hard copy instead
This was a decent book. Lots of advice that you can try to apply to the real world. That being said, the format of the book just doesn’t allow for it to be enjoyable as an audiobook. The hard copy would probably be a lot better.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- 匿名
- 11-11-2019
fantastic guide for life
An amazing set of principles applicable to all pursuits in life. highly recommend this book
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- Amazon Customer
- 13-10-2019
One of the best books I've ever read
The premise of the book is simple. Automate your decision making by writing down your principles because everything happens over an over again. The rest of the book is about Ray's principles in his personal life and business. The book is incredibly valuable. Speaking from first-hand experience, you will see massive differences if you truly start applying these principles in your life.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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- Patrick Eberle
- 30-06-2018
Idea-meritocracy/Principles Reference
This work is a reference to Ray Dalio's principals & a brief history of how he created them to get where he is now.
I throughly enjoyed the first 5 hours of this book. Most everything after seemed redundant. So much so, that Ray often sites the same example for the same points over and over again. These instances took value away from this book's readability and message.
This book is not very clear that it serves as more of a reference and that it is intended to be two reference volumes combined. Albeit, the title's subscript mentions Work & Life. This work reads more like a dictionary after you remove the first few hours of Dalio's life story.
Besides your ability to create a drinking game from the number of times Ray states, "Idea-meritocracy", "Radical Truthfulness", "Believability", & each time he retells you about starting Bridgewater, you will find helpful advice on this book. I have listed general themes below
Ray could've summarized this book into less than a 10 hr read and kept the same quality in the 16 hr behemoth of reiderations. See my recommendation on his YouTube video below. 30 min.
Overall:
This book poses interesting ideas on how to improve life and business results. Obviously Bridgewater stands as a shining example of the success from Ray's points. I find that this melds well with Thinking Fast & Thinking Slow as well as many other jobs on how we think and make decisions. It makes our circle of knowledge a little bit wider on how to meet our goals/be successful. I am not sure I would recommend this book, but I believe it does actively challenge you to improve yourself and your processes in life and business.
What to take away:
Principles are useful for helping us get what we want out of life. They help guide us to meet our goals. You could argue they are algorithms that make us the best we want to be when we follow them.
We can use a 5 step plan to adjust our learn from our mistakes and become better, thus updating ourselves or our Principles.
It's best to write these principles down.
It's best to take the opinion of the whole to make decisions, rather than to think your opinion holds more weight. Seek out experts that are more "Believable" than you and weight their advice higher in their strengths.
Ray's YouTube videos are a greater & FREE synopsis of this book that cuts everything down to 30 minutes. I'd highly recommend reviewing that first of you're interested in this book.
136 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Belle Ho
- 16-11-2017
Insightful but repetitive
I listened to the entire book to understand the context of the principles. However that led me to become easily bored by the constant repetition of the words "idea maritocracy" and "radical honesty". I would suggest skipping to the second portion of the book when the author explains the life and work principles.
56 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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- Dr. Scott K. Moffat
- 30-06-2018
Could have been much shorter
Slow in topic and performance. I had to listen to it on 2.0x. Some of this is very interesting, but overall it feels rather verbose and repetitive. I understood from the outset that this would be quite different from Shoe Dog, but I was hoping for something a little more exciting Than it turned out to be.
The first part of the book was the most interesting to me. It focuses on the background of the company and its Ascension.
14 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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- Robert F. Jones
- 08-10-2017
Personal
Two stars - meh
three stars - good
four stars - worth a second read
five stars - life-changing - my top 50 of all time
Worth a second read because the ideas at the core of the book seem contrary to what has been my life experience.
I'd love to spend a couple of days at Bridgewater or extensively interview some longtime employees to find out if it works as the author suggests.
My experience has been that 'Idea Meritocracies' and 'Radical honesty' work great for those at the top, who's positions cannot be threatened because they deem what is valued and right.
I've also always been told that attempting to fit market movements to algorithms cannot predict the really important swings. This is because we cannot properly summarize all of the market conditions that existed historically, nor can we know all of the factors that effect markets currently because our information is incomplete. I should be able to tell if his approach works by comparing Bridgewater's performance to that of its peers, but I have not yet done this.
The author does make a telling comment early in the book, regarding the computational nature of reality. He states that if we knew we had a perfect description of the current state of the universe, we'd be able to predict what would happen next. This is by no means an established fact. Chaos theory, quantum mechanics and and Heisenberg would probably disagree.
I cannot decide if the 'Baseball Card' approach to personnel makes sense. Baseball stats are more objective that job performance or personality types based on standardized tests.
I'd love to believe that keeping stats on everyone would help predict future performance, but as Sabermetrics showed, which stats one calculates and how they are weighted have significant impact on outcomes.
I'd love to believe that his basic assumptions are correct, but I'm really ambivalent. This book raised many more questions than it answered.
If I check the facts and they seem to hold water, I will make changes to my life and thus this would qualify as a five-star book.
193 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- James Adams
- 22-11-2017
The Management/CEO’s Handbook
Having fewer reports (zero), than the author, this book - while very interesting, insightful and practical - comes across as directed towards folks way above my pay grade. CEOs and VPs in particular. Still, as a small cog in a very big wheel, I recommend it for both perspective on what good management looks like, and for straight-up honorable principles to live by.
80 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Redmond2000
- 01-10-2017
Bored to Tears
I don't usually give up on a book, especially one being read to me during a long drive when the only other option is silence. But, geesh. Some of the lead up stories to what I thought was the meat forthcoming were interesting but all in all no meat delivered. At least nothing up to the point where I threw up the white hankie and hit the stop button. The advice was generic and lacked the, for instance, this is how you'd apply this. I do know that he knows all about the ins and outs of pork bellies and the crops they eat and weather patterns ad nauseam. And he mentioned many times how he rubbed elbows with the rich and famous. Got it - you're a big deal.
61 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jon David Schein
- 28-10-2017
phenomenally replete with wisdom
if you're building a business or hold a management role in one or even if you're looking to improve your day-to-day life, I bet this book will serve you well.
18 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Market Maven
- 14-10-2017
Two-thirds full.
I am a fan of Ray Dalio, the legendary hedge-fund manager. This book has three sections: a bio of Ray, followed by his "life principles," followed then by his "work principles." I found his life story to be very interesting indeed. And his "life principles" were excellent, especially the notion of "radical transparency" and "radical openness" and honestly confronting ones problems. So far great. But I got really bogged down in the third section, his "work principles." This seemed more like a corporate human resources manual than anything one could use in life. Even if you were a CEO or department head of a several hundred person organization, his principles often seemed like cliches. So much depends on what people are charged to do, but he has very little of that. I wish he had spent more time on his investment philosophy. This is where is his genius lies. He is not Tony Robbins. But I did learn from this book to confront my own problems more honestly and directly.
36 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- McKenzy Germain
- 15-10-2017
The Blueprint — Lessons From Reformed New Yorker
The Blueprint — 10 Lessons From Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
What makes this book a gold mine for me and like-minded people:
1. Understanding why a meritocratic environment works best for my personality has helped me shed imposter syndrome; mask off.
2. Ray defines a valid solution around a psychological dichotomy and process that stems to eliminate a ton of common misconceptions. Supportive ideologies around the power of numbers & group theory, associated with machine learning seem to be a great formula for creating an effective symbiotic ecosystem. If practiced by those who are open to change and constructive criticism.
3. The opening line made me want to get on plane to NYC, take a train over to CT, give Ray a high five, then head back to the concrete jungle to engage in shenanigans.
4. Machine learning (ai) can have a positive outcome as long as its used as supportive component for analytics and behavioral studies.
5. Ai, when done right, has the ability to yield some highly beneficial outcomes around structuring teams and making business decisions. At the same time, it can aid in studying your personal history, train of thought, and help predict what environments are good for personality.
6. It’s good to be open to constructive criticism.
7. Arguments should occur with the intention of arriving at new learnings, not to generate hatred or sense of detachment from the opposing party.
8. Some personalities just don’t work for the environment or culture that you are trying to creates. And in certain cases YOU actually create the high level of toxicity that destroys the environment that you are attempting to create.
9. The goal of learning is to grow and one day help another elevate themselves by sharing your learnings in an intuitive manner.
10. Mistakes should be embraced in the same we celebrate blessings. For in a lost or failure, we have an opportunity to learn and increase our aptitude around problem solving for that specific issue.
Bonus: never give up and let your humility serve as the honey that will capture the hearts and minds of your counterparts.
26 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- T. Herman
- 05-10-2017
Narrow Perspective on Modern Workplace
Some of the ideas here are interesting but this really feels like the thoughts of someone who has been "the boss" their entire career, and never experienced other work cultures. Ray is clearly not shy about conflict and I doubt any introverts have ever worked at Bridgewater. If you were starting a hedge fund with a bunch of alpha males this would be the goto strategy for success but I don't think a lot of this advice carries over to other fields and a lot I would consider harmful for creating a truly creative environment.
14 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Thomas Sichel
- 30-09-2017
A life changing boom
Thank you Ray Dalio for writing this! Business and life guidance from someone well read and most definitely experiences..
17 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 28-11-2017
Your compass north guide on your life journey
I truly enjoyed this book and it was particularly beneficial being read by the author. Ray Dalio is a very successful person and it’s excellent for him to share, in full transparency, his Principles that shaped him and Bridgewater. This allows you to gain a very intimate insight on Rays compass north during all important and mundane decisions and can be used a guide for you as you develop your own principles.
Of course, this is the premise of the book that to achieve results it requires radical truth with radical transparency. Ray certainly delivers on this and I have begun to implement these within my career and life.
13 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Vlad
- 20-10-2017
I personally didn't find it educational enough.
The book feels a lot like a linear autobiography. It talks about major events from the author’s past, including successes and failures the author has learnt from.
In the beginning, the book sounded to have been structured well and the author’s writing style seemed quite analytical. The author’s voice is clear and composed throughout. I really liked it when the author states he doesn’t wish to impose his beliefs on the listener and that the advice he’ll be sharing may not benefit everyone.
The author frequently speaks about how has helped companies run more efficiently. Most times, however, I struggled to extract value from his explanations unless he gave some sort of evaluation in the end.
The author also speaks a lot about his company Bridgewater, its challenges and achievements as well as constantly evolving culture and management. To me it sounded the author was more interested in describing, explaining and at times praising his business instead of looking to provide knowledge to the listener in a direct and understandable way.
Four hours in, the book appeared to have become an autobiography of Ray Dalio’s business and career. I decided to return it because the more I listened to it, the less I felt it benefited me.
I wouldn’t recommend the book to everyone but if you are into investing, finance and business management, you may really like the book.
32 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- khwexi
- 02-11-2017
Book of the year!
1.3 Don't let the fears of what others think of you stand in your way.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- J
- 14-02-2018
Mostly about Bridgewater
Not really a general self-help book, but has value if interested in the company.
8 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- walduscycu
- 22-11-2017
An absolute must read
The author is incredibly eloquent and down to earth person. Normal language is being used to explain complexity of company organisation etc.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- MARK WATSON
- 22-11-2017
An absolute gem!
This has to be there with the best book I have consumed in a very long time. So much so that I truly believe that any individual should listen to or read to add value and benefit their lives both personally and professionally. I could not switch it off!
3 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 26-10-2017
Great insights but very, very repetitive.
This book contained some really useful insights and offered a glimpse of how the world of financial services will someday look. That said, it was extremely repetitive and dragged on for about 9 hours longer than it needed to.
3 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Omar Berrada
- 03-02-2020
Too repetitive
It is definitely a good book but it could have soooo much shorter as it is very repetitive.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ellis
- 05-01-2020
insightful journey
Very well structured material read clearly, littered with insightful gems.
Would 100% recomend to all business owners small or large, managers, supervisors and anyone working with people.