Never seize on the first available option, no matter how good it seems, before you’ve asked questions and explored. To prevent myself from falling into this trap, I used to literally ask myself questions: Am I learning? Have I learned enough yet that it’s time for deciding?
Keep in mind both the rates of change and the levels of things, and the relationships between them.
The most important thing I learned is an approach to life based on principles that helps me find out what’s true and what to do about it.
Be imprecise. Understand the concept of “by-and-large” and use approximations.
A proper goal is something that you really need to achieve. Desires are things that you want that can prevent you from reaching your goals.
I have tried to convey the approach that worked for me – an idea meritocracy in which meaningful work and meaningful relationships are the goals and radical truth and radical transparency are the ways of achieving them – so that you can decide what, if any of it, is of use to you.
By looking at nature from the top down, we can see that much of what we call human nature is really animal nature.
Yet most people are like ants focused only on themselves and their own anthill; they believe the universe revolves around people and don’t pay attention to the universal laws that are true for all species.
While I could understand people liking something that helps them and disliking things that hurt them, it doesn’t make sense to call something good or bad in an absolute sense based only on how it affects individuals.
I have come to realize that bad times coupled with good reflections provide some of the best lessons, and not just about business but also about relationships.
This evolutionary cycle is not just for people but for countries, companies, economies – for everything.
It’s important not to let our biases stand in the way of our objectivity. To get good results, we need to be analytical rather.
I saw that to do exceptionally well you have to push your limits and that, if you push your limits, you will crash and it will hurt a lot.
Clearly, we needed to build a new governance system that would allow Bridgewater to retain its unique way of being and its uncompromising standards no matter who was in charge – and build it to be resilient enough to change the company’s management if that was required.
And the people one meets at the top aren’t necessarily more special than those one meets at the bottom or in between.
Be an imperfectionist. Perfectionists spend too much time on little differences at the margins at the expense of the important things.
Ao ganhar essa perspectiva, passei a vivenciar os momentos dolorosos de maneira radicalmente diferente. Em vez de me sentir frustrado ou arrasado, eu encarava a dor como um lembrete da natureza de que existe um aprendizado mais importante.
To be “good” something must operate consistently with the laws of reality and contribute to the evolution of the whole; that is what is most rewarded. For example, if you come up with something the world values, you almost can’t help but be rewarded. Conversely, reality tends to penalize those people, species, and things that don’t work well and detract from evolution.17.
But I keep that pain in perspective, knowing that I will get through these setbacks and that most of my learning will come from reflecting on them.
Whatever success I’ve had is because of the principles I followed and not because of anything unique about me, so anyone following these principles can expect to produce broadly similar results.