You shoulder (almost) never drop a goal because you think it’s unattainable!
Step 2: Identify problems/obstacles
Bring problems to the surface, so you can learn from them
Don’t mistake causes with problems!
Problem = Poor performance
Cause = Not getting enough sleep
While the logical part of your brain knows it’s good to address your problems, your emotional part hates it
Step 3: Diagnose the root cause
Diagnose before proposing solutions
Find the disease rather than the symptoms (look at ROOT causes, rather than proximate causes)
Symptoms = I missed the train because I didn’t buy train tickets
Disease = I missed the train because I’m forgetful
Step 4: Design principles for avoiding the problems/obstacles in the future
Step 5: Follow the principles
What are principles?
Principles = Decision making criteria
How to find principles?
Categorize situations and find principles for dealing with them:
Pain + Reflection (find the root cause) = Principles
Use other peoples principles
What do do when experiencing a new type of situation you don’t have principles for?
Find someone who has!
How to improve your principles?
Analyze previous decisions to see if they would have worked
Write them down as algorithms a computer can run!
Computers can process more information and are unemotional!
Compare your intuitions with the decisions made by the computer:
If the computer were right and your intuition were wrong, examine why
If your intuition was right and the computer were wrong, consider updating the principles the computer uses
Life principles
Understand your 2 biggest barriers
Ego barrier
It’s hard to see your own weaknesses & mistakes!
Blind spot barrier
We all see the world differently (Linear vs. lateral thinking, big picture vs. details, etc.)
Solve your 2 biggest barriers with open-mindedness
Realize that others might see something more accurately than you
The probability that you have the best answer is really low!
How to be more open minded?
Explore different points of view while being in the state of “not knowing”.
Understand the arguments of the smartest people who disagree with you
When someone is more believable than yourself, place them as teacher and yourself as student
If everybody disagrees with you, try to figure out the reason for it!
Humility
Humility is important, because it’s required for seeking help from others
Knowing a lot + humility is better than either alone!
Radical transparency
Seeing yourself as a machine within a bigger machine
It’s more important to be a designer of your machine, than a worker of your machine (even though both are important)
How to improve your machine?
Identify recurring problems!
Compare your outcomes with your goals!
Consider whether to find big picture or in details
Only go into details when necessary
Understand that we are all wired differently
Just like we are born with physical constraints, we are also born with mental constraints
Some can be changed through training while others can’t.
Brain plasticity is real, but the brain isn’t 100% mallable
Find ways of dealing with your weaknesses
Deny them (what most people do)
Turn them into strengths
Find workarounds
Pursue different goals
Get help
We are preprogrammed with learning
We are instinctively afraid of snakes, but not of flowers
You have to see yourself and others objectively
Looking at yourself objectively is hard, so get help from others input!
Work principles
Understand that most people will operate according to their own interests
Make believability-weighted decisions
Believable people are those who have repeated successes and can explain the cause-effect relationships behind them
Bridgewater’s dot collector lets them see the believability-weighted conclusion and the equal-weighted conclusion, to see if there are any disagreements
The dot collector uses ratings on different attributes (creativity, expertise in subject, etc. ) from peers & tests.
How Ray Dalio operates Bridgewater
Personality tests they use
MBTI
The workplace personality inventory
The team dimensions profile
Stratified systems theory
Coach
Library of common scenarios and the principles to apply
Dot collector
See each others thought in real time
Give each other positive or negative dots for specific attributes, which is dynamically inserted into a grid for everyone to see
Baseball cards
Information from reviews, tests, choices they make, etc.
This information is analyzed by computers to generate people’s strengths & weaknesses on the baseball cards
People profile
A text summary of the baseball cards
Combinator
Name some people you would like to solve a problem, and then it synthesizes their strengths and find similar people
Issue log
Who made which mistake?
How severe?
Pain button
Lets people record their pain as they experience it
Later they are prompted to reflect on it to make progress (because of his principle “pain + reflection = progress”)
Dispute resolver
A series of guided questions to resolve disputes
Daily update tool
For employees to report what they did, issues & reflections on those issues
Contract tool
For everything people agree to do at meetings
Process flow diagrams
Who has which responsibilities?
Policy & procedural manual
Instructions for how to behave
Metrics
Find them by:
Knowing your goals
Knowing the processes that lead to those goals
Finding the best places in the processes to measure
Find levers that affect those metrics
Making decisions
Based on your knowledge your decide which actions to take to pursue your goals, which are based on your values
Have the best possible life by:
Knowing what the best decisions are
Having the courage to make them
Techniques for good decision making
Use logic, reason and common sense!
Make expected value calculations
Value of decision = (Benfits * likelihood of benefits) – (cost * likelihood of cost)
Compare the benefit of gathering more information with the cost of waiting to decide.
Perhaps get someone else to make your decision?
Getting perspective
Be wary of emotional decision making
What feels good in the moment might be bad long-term
When facing two seemingly opposed decisions, get the best of both worlds?
A group can make better decisions than an individual!
Remember that everything seems much bigger in the moment than in retrospect
Get rid of irrelevant details, so you can see what’s important!
Also, usually don’t seek more than the 20% of information that gives you 80% of the results!
Other
How much better is it to be REALLY successful?
He experienced everything from being down to being on top
Talked to those he wanted to talk to!
Gone where he wanted to go!
Gotten everything he wanted to own!
Done everything he wanted to do!
But he says it wasn’t much better than having basic needs meet: Good bed, relationships, food & sex!
He is still struggling
The people at the top weren’t that much more special
Having a lot comes with heavy burdens
Being well known is probably worse than being anonymous
Even his impact was small, when putting things in perspective
We are insignificant
You are 1 out of 7 billion people, which is 1 out of 10 million species on the planet, which is 1 out of 100 billion planets in our galaxy, which is 1 out of about 2 trillion galaxies
Your life is 1/3000 of humanity’s existence, which is 1/20.000 of the earths existence
