Hi I'm Chris I'm a doctor from the UK and I'm going to summarise Principles Life and Work by
Ray Dalio. Now, every day you encounter a problem or some kind of thing that you need to think about
and what you can do is rely on principles so you don't need to think about these from scratch
there's a lot of wisdom in this book things like maturity is the ability to reject good
alternatives so that you can get even better ones and when you think about how you can yourself
be the greatest success is so often actually to orchestrate others to do things well without you
and step below that is doing things well yourself and really the lowest on the
ladder is doing things badly yourself the author mentions a bit about AI artificial intelligence
and really suggests that the key here is when both humans and machines are working together but
suggests that he believes humans are still needed to power AI and put it in the right direction
I liked a bit about success and calling this the 'tall poppy syndrome' seemingly this is
an Australian expression but what you see is that it's the tallest poppy that gets cut in the field
first so when you're becoming more successful just be aware that there will be more people who
are wanting to cut you down regarding goals get these sorted and then think how do I achieve these
because the process of doing and learning is really where you're getting happiness from
and after a while possessions don't really matter to you now know what you're good at but most
important most importantly when you should ask for advice or even other people to make decisions
for you various good practice behaviours such as facing the harsh realities worry actually about
achieving your goal make your decisions on the basis of first second third order consequences
understand how to manage pain so that you despite challenges produce progress and hold
yourself accountable to others as an important bit about distinguishing root causes and the actual
potential media proximate cause now approximate cause could be from a lack of attention
somebody isn't performing as well as they usually do one day but a root cause where there is a
systematic often failure or a process that could be improved and being able to identify root causes
is fundamentally important to get your organization functioning as best as it can be
now there is a huge amount of content here about actually designing and remembering that designing
precedes doing so when you're undertaking a plan make a plan first before just starting it
good works very much underrated and the author suggests that there's only a few people who can
continually push through their to-do lists and which they've prioritized prior to the undertaking
action and then can continue to sustain momentum so when you're thinking about to-do lists
and things let's have clear goals identify don't tolerate problems diagnose problems at
the root cause design our plan and push through to completion so there's two barriers to be aware of
ego and blind spots overcome these with a radical open-mindedness now when you're being open-minded
try and triangulate this by discussing the issues with other open-minded people to come to the best
solution see closed-minded people often will have trouble thinking about to thought simultaneously
particularly if there's conflict and it doesn't fit with what they previously have thought about
the book mentions a lot about the concept of a shaper these are people that can go from
visualization to actualization and suggests that he himself is a shaper as was the late Steve Jobs
now shapers can both get the big picture and also hone down on the granular problems what a shaper
is really is a visionary a practical thinker and very determined this differs from a perfectionist
who tend to spend too much time on little details and margins at the expense of the important things
in a typical project there's maybe five or ten really important factors to consider when making
a decision that's the big picture the by and large statement and when somebody comes in and says well
not always just be aware you're often going to be forced into the minutiae here so there's often
almost always potential exceptions to things but very much so if you can get the big principles in
place then a project would often function well and this is very much going in and supporting
the 80 20 principle now when an organization develops this tends to be from one independent
thinker who's wanting to achieve the most often an audacious goal of goals and then it moves to
groups of independent thinkers aiming to work together but they don't always work
together so when there are disagreements and when there are things that plans need to be
produced this book suggests having really a decision-making framework
written down in advance that people can fall back on now with this independent framework
ideally people have collaborated and agreed to this before it is used only in rare exceptions
with the framework get changed and certainly the person who's managing the framework you don't want
them to sabotage it because of their own personal gain or a group that they're particularly fond of
and they could sabotage it so they need to believe in this framework and the ideal thing
would have a framework that you may be put down on paper and then put into a computer so it's there
and it can help people and really you're wanting to try to get great triangulated decision making
and what we want to do is think about people's reasoning so often somebody would get the right
answer or an answer that you think why have they made that conclusion and being able to dive in
and understand their exact reasoning is extremely important if somebody a bit of caution does say
I think that I just be sceptical of this because most people are not very good at evaluating
themselves so somebody who's saying I think that I am just be aware people are good at some things
and they're often perhaps good at several things but in a team you want a lot of different people
working together so you may have the big picture visionary who's the goal setter the
the kind of taste tester who's assigned to a job of identifying problems and not tolerating these
a logical detective can probe into things to diagnose the root cause of of issues an
imaginative designer can really craft a plan well and think about improvements then you've got the
reliable task maker who can actually get things done and executed so be aware people are often not
one of these they are a combination of them but when designing a team you really want people with
the all those skill sets so they can come together in that triangle and make things better a quick
word about recruiting be aware that we tend to employ people who are like ourselves so try to
get away from that and instead get people who are right for the role or perhaps a different way
who have different skill sets than you and the existing team so that you can become better
now when people have enough power and they can apply it well this is extremely important and
i think that consistency and being able to use your abilities is fundamentally important
so going back to these principles these are a form of leverage that can compound your understanding
of an issue and it is my belief that there is nothing that you can't accomplish if you can't
if you think creatively and get difficult things done so feel free to comment like and subscribe I
hope you've enjoyed that and I'll see you all next time