Principles: Life and Work - Ray Dalio

⭐ 7.0/10

(Originally written by Tim)

I was handed this 600 word tome by my lead at work almost 2 years ago, and today I finally finished it. And no, I didn't just start it a couple weeks ago, I started 2 years ago and read about 2 pages a day. It's that kind of book.

Ray Dalio started Bridgewater, an investment management company, and he is now one of the wealthiest people on Earth, and has been called the "Steve Jobs of investment". This book outlines the principles he crafted during his time as CEO, and the way he believes a company should run. It starts off with about 150 pages of his own biography, and how it all started, then really gets in to the nitty gritty with a systematic listing of his philosophies.

My company follows quite a few of the principles he lays out, and I realized as I was reading how much of a Bible this must be to the leaders in my own company, since I recognized a lot of his pet phrases and concepts.

It mostly revolves his concept of an idea meritocracy - that the best idea should always win, and the principles that fall out of that. There is a lot of structure to this book, and this is the foundation.

I did find a couple anecdotes hilarious, since he is a man of tremendous wealth. Name drops like, "the Dalai Lama once told me...", or saying that you should always seek multiple opinions "like I did with a diagnosis I once had so I contacted the top 3 surgeons in the world" are pretty ridiculous, and happen pretty often. Granted he does share many of his biggest failures, so I will allow a couple flexes.

Can't say I loved reading it, but I was intentional with it, and felt like a learned a bit every day from it. Most of it is not applicable to my day to day, but I think anyone trying to become a leader in their domain would benefit from reading this. There were quite a few golden nuggets I took away, and if I was starting a company I would probably read this again and take notes.