3. Be Radically Open Minded
3.1 Recognise your two barriers: your ego and your blind spots.
Those who adapt do so by:
- Teaching their brains to work in a way that doesn’t come naturally (like the creative designing an organisation system).
- Using compensating mechanisms (like programmed reminders).
- Relying on the help of others who are strong where they are weak.
3.2 Practice radical open-mindedness
- Decision making is a two-step process: First take in all the relevant information, then decide.
- Don’t worry about looking good, worry about achieving your goals.
- You’re looking for the best answer, not simply the best answer that you can come up with yourself.
3.3 Appreciate the art of thoughtful disagreement
- Open-mindedness isn’t easy because of your lizard brain, so you have to practice taking feedback impersonally.
4. Understand that People are Wired Very Differently
5. Learn How to Make Decisions Effectively
Think about how you can make all of your decisions well, in a systematic, repeatable way, and then being able to describe the process so clearly and precisely that anyone else can make the same quality decisions under the same circumstances.
5.1: Recognise that the biggest threat to good decision making is harmful emotions, and the decision making is a two-step process (first learning, then deciding)
- Failing to consider second and third order consequences is the cause of a lot of painfully bad decisions, and it is especially deadly when the first inferior option confirms your own biases.
5.2: Synthesise the situation at hand
- One of the most important decisions you can make is who you ask questions of
- Don’t believe everything you hear
- Everything looks bigger up close: what’s happening today seems like a bigger deal than it will in retrospect
- New is overvalued relative to great
- Don’t over squeeze dots
5.6 Make your decisions as expected value calculations
- Think of each decision as a bet with a probability and a reward for being right and a probability and a penalty for being wrong.
- Sometimes it’s smart to take a chance even when the odds are overwhelmingly against you if the cost of being wrong is negligible relative to the reward that comes with the slim chance of being right. “It never hurts to ask.”
- The best choices are the ones that have more pros than cons, not those that don’t have any cons at all.
5.7 Prioritise by weighing the value of additional information against the cost of not deciding.
- All of your must-dos must be done before you do any of your “like-to-dos”
- You won’t have time to deal with unimportant things, which is better than not having time to deal with important things.
5.9 Use Principles
To do this well:
- Slow down your thinking so you can note the criteria you are using to make your decision.
- Write the criteria down as a principle.
- Think about those criteria when you have an outcome to assess, and refine them before the next “one of those” comes along.
Convert your principles into algorithms and have the computer make decisions alongside you (this he uses in his business but is still a very useful and valuable life principle if you apply it).
And that’s the entire summary of one of the most financially successful men on earth, Ray Dalio’s, life principles! If you’re running your own business or interested in his work principles I highly recommend reading this entire book to see how he ran the most successful hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater Associations. The lessons in his book Principles, is invaluable and can be used in day to day life and is really worth the read.
That’s it from me this week! Hope you guzzled down all of this incredible info on our thirsty Thursday and I’ll see you the same time next week!
And if you haven’t already, make sure you head to my Instagram @elev8life_with_paige and check out my new post, comment or send me a DM and connect with me on all forms of social so we can hang out more through the week 🙂
See you there!