📖Ray Dalio

Work and Life Principles

🌱 Beginner★★★★☆

Principles bridge the gap between goals and outcomes.

💬

I believe that having principles that work is essential for getting what we want out of life. We need to compare the outcomes we get with our goals to assess our principles.

— Principles: Life and Work,2017

🏠 Everyday Analogy

A process is like a pilot checklist: discipline prevents simple mistakes when pressure rises and keeps outcomes more repeatable.

📖 Core Interpretation

Ray Dalio advocates a repeatable process: define criteria, execute consistently, and review decisions against evidence. Process quality drives outcome consistency.
💎 Key Insight:Continuous principle refinement drives long-term improvement.

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❓ Why It Matters

Without process, there is no reliable feedback loop. Structured execution and review improve decision quality over time.

🎯 How to Practice

Run a decision loop of research, thesis, execution, and post-mortem; document assumptions and update playbooks with evidence, not hindsight bias.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Having opinions without execution criteria
Reviewing outcomes but not decisions
Abandoning rules during volatility spikes

📚 Case Studies

1
British Pound ERM Crisis (1992)
Bridgewater analyzed UK’s unsustainable ERM peg and accumulating pressures on the pound.
✨ Outcome:Positioned for devaluation; profited when the UK exited the ERM on Black Wednesday, validating systematic study of cause-effect linkages.
2
Global Financial Crisis (2008)
All-Weather, with balanced risk across asset classes, declined far less than equity-heavy portfolios and avoided forced selling during the crash.
✨ Outcome:Preserved capital relative to stocks and participated in the subsequent recovery, illustrating crisis resilience.

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