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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
I listened to the audiobook and ordered the hardcover version about 2/3 of the way through. This is not a book to simply read or listen to in one shot, especially for someone running a business like I am. That being said, I found this first pass to be incredibly useful and have already found myself tweaking some of our operating principles.
For example, the concept of believability was obvious when he writes about it, but it's not something I incorporate into my decision-making as much as I should. I'm also going through a hiring process right now, and the idea of designing "the machine" (your process, team) around the roles needed vs. the people you have on hand is really smart.
The project of absorbing this dense tome of knowledge and experience is probably going to take years of study and experimentation, and I'm looking forward to the journey.
For example, the concept of believability was obvious when he writes about it, but it's not something I incorporate into my decision-making as much as I should. I'm also going through a hiring process right now, and the idea of designing "the machine" (your process, team) around the roles needed vs. the people you have on hand is really smart.
The project of absorbing this dense tome of knowledge and experience is probably going to take years of study and experimentation, and I'm looking forward to the journey.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
The ideas and content in the book are really solid. There are plenty of great quotes and aphorisms to extract from the book. I will probably use it as a reference of sorts, however, as a book I found it hard to engage with the material. It was just a little too preachy and self-help and repetitive. The book is like a string of Medium posts each around a principal, good in small doses but not necessarily a cohesive story or book.
On the author's own recommendation, I did skip the auto biography at the front.
Here are a couple of examples of principals:
> Don’t confuse what you wish were true with what is really true.
> Don’t worry about looking good—worry instead about achieving your goals.
> Don’t let pain stand in the way
> Don’t blame bad outcomes on anyone else
On the author's own recommendation, I did skip the auto biography at the front.
Here are a couple of examples of principals:
> Don’t confuse what you wish were true with what is really true.
> Don’t worry about looking good—worry instead about achieving your goals.
> Don’t let pain stand in the way
> Don’t blame bad outcomes on anyone else
A couple reviews and an interview transcript:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/business/ray-dalio-book-bridgewater.html
https://www.wired.com/story/ray-dalio-principles/
https://www.recode.net/2017/11/11/16635714/transcript-bridgewater-associates-hedge-fund-co-founder-author-ray-dalio-on-recode-decode
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/business/ray-dalio-book-bridgewater.html
https://www.wired.com/story/ray-dalio-principles/
https://www.recode.net/2017/11/11/16635714/transcript-bridgewater-associates-hedge-fund-co-founder-author-ray-dalio-on-recode-decode
Remarkable, but also deeply flawed. I loved peeking into this system, and want someone to stand on Ray's shoulders to build the next version of it.
If you're like me and want to wring every last drop of magical thinking out of your decision making, you will take to this book immediately. If you're not like me, you'll still find lots of good advice on how to face hard truths and get to underlying root causes. Not as pithy as the original self-published eBook, but still a must-read.
I was a little disappointed with this. It got so many rave reviews that I guess I expected more. The first part (i.e. the bio) was interesting but the principles section was just not that useful. It all seemed a little too abstract. Lot of do this and do that but very few concrete examples of how they had proved useful to him or advice for how to implement in your own life. In the end I gave up 2/3 of the way into the book.
Interesting read. The principles themselves are mostly common sense in today's modern companies. What's intriguing is that a guy with a financial background built a company (and life) managed by algorithms. As an engineer I feel I constantly have a Ray Dalio with devil's horns on one of my shoulders and I struggle to listen to the other guy as well that tells me to be more empathetic and that people aren't robots. :) So yeah, the principles are cool, in an ideal world we would live like this but people have feelings, we are imperfect, so it must be really frustrating to constantly feel that you're not as good as a robot would be.
The other big thing I'm missing from the book is that it doesn't address unconscious biases. Basically they "teach" systems which people are credible by collecting opinions from people. The problem is that people have unconscious biases. For example most people believe that women are worse engineers than men. If we tell our biased opinions to computers and they learn these judgements, we are encoding prejudice in our decision making processes. Meritocracy sounds like the ideal system, but once again, we aren't robots, so we have to take human imperfections into account as well.
In general it's a really interesting book, I'm happy I've read it and I already had several interesting discussions based on the book, but I don't think it had a significant impact on what I'll do in the future.
The other big thing I'm missing from the book is that it doesn't address unconscious biases. Basically they "teach" systems which people are credible by collecting opinions from people. The problem is that people have unconscious biases. For example most people believe that women are worse engineers than men. If we tell our biased opinions to computers and they learn these judgements, we are encoding prejudice in our decision making processes. Meritocracy sounds like the ideal system, but once again, we aren't robots, so we have to take human imperfections into account as well.
In general it's a really interesting book, I'm happy I've read it and I already had several interesting discussions based on the book, but I don't think it had a significant impact on what I'll do in the future.
Incredibly strong core ideas - and it’s a beautifully put together book - it’s just not that readable if you go through it cover to cover. That’s probably not the right mode to experience it - ideally you would have a way of just going to the advice you need to hear, because there are single sentences of wisdom in it that are worth the cover price on their own.
It's a lot to take in, but also a lot of goodness. If you want a shorter version, his app is free.