Ratings36
Average rating3.8
#1 New York Times Bestseller “Significant...The book is both instructive and surprisingly moving.” —The New York Times 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 forty 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm not getting many critics on the reviews. Yes, you can disagree with many things he says, you can find them not really news. The point is that he's just sharing his point of view from his experience. It's not a magic potion but just an opinion of a very smart individual, it's up to you to absorb it in the best way possible.
I've personally found it very interesting, Mr. Dalio gives very interesting opinions and thoughts about organisational behaviour, macro-economics, and ethics, definitely worth reading!
Could have been way better, unfortunately most of the principles talked about in this book aren't really tremendous. Moreover, there was quite a lack of work into making this book adequately publishable as most of the text looked like an internal HR memo more than a real book. Some thoughts were interesting, but not really enough to justify the time it took to read.
I think this might be the best book I've read in all of 2017. Lots of practical thoughts on life and how those apply to work. So many good takeaways that I don't even know where to start in implementing. I think this could easily be a book that I go through several times, and focus on pieces of it at a time.
Also fantastic advice for running a business. And it was cool to see how all those things were based on how we should live our lives.
I've read only half of the book. It contains several useful ideas. But there is so much boring and common sense stuff, that it's hard to push through. The first part about author's life is meh. The second part about life principles is ok. I've decided to skip the last part about work principles, as it's mostly not applicable to my current life. Maybe I'm just not the target audience for the book, which is I guess higher management and owners of large companies.