Principles Of The Day: Alignment & Small Groups

When You Have Alignment, Cherish It

While there is nobody in the world who will share your point of view on everything, there are people who will share your most important values and the ways in which you choose to live them out. Make sure you end up with those people.

3 To 5 Is More Than 20

Three to five smart, conceptual people seeking the right answers In an open-minded way will generally lead to the best answers. It may be tempting to convene a larger group, but having too many people collaborate is counterproductive even if the members of the larger group are smart and talented.

Principle Of The Day: Be An Imperfectionist

Perfectionists spend too much time on little differences at the margins at the expense of the important things.

Principle Of The Day: Don't Mistake Possibilities For Probabilities

Anything is possible. It’s the probabilities that matter. Everything must be weighed in terms of its likelihood and prioritized.

Principle Of The Day: Choose Your Habits Well

If you do just about anything frequently enough over time, you will form a habit that will control you. Good habits are those that get you to do what your “upper-level you” wants, and bad habits are those that are controlled by your “lower-level you.”

Principle Of The Day: Meditate

I practice Transcendental Meditation and believe that it has enhanced my open-mindedness, higher-level perspective, equanimity, and creativity. It helps slow things down so that I can act calmly even in the face of chaos, just like a ninja in a street fight.

What It's Like To Work At The Most Successful Hedge Fund In The World

What it's like to work at the most successful hedge fund in the world, where 30 percent of new employees don't make it and those who do are considered 'intellectual Navy SEALs': read the complete article HERE.

Capitalism Is Not Working For The Majority Of People

Ray Dalio speaks about wealth inequality and why capitalism is not working for all Americans: ‘Capitalism basically is not working for the majority of people’ 

“Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent of the population’s net worth is equal to the bottom 90 percent combined. In other words, a big giant wealth gap. That was the same — last time that happened was the late ’30s.”

Principle Of The Day: Radical Open-Mindedness

Learning is the product of a continuous real-time feedback loop in which we make decisions, see their outcomes, and improve our understanding of reality as a result. Being radically open-minded enhances the efficiency of those feedback loops, because it makes what you are doing, and why, so clear to yourself and others that there can’t be any misunderstandings. The more open-minded you are, the less likely you are to deceive your-self—and the more likely it is that others will give you honest feedback. If they are “believable” people (and it’s very important to know who is “believable”), you will learn a lot from them. Being radically transparent and radically open-minded accelerates this learning process. It can also be difficult because being radically transparent rather than more guarded exposes one to criticism. It’s natural to fear that. Yet if you don’t put yourself out there with your radical transparency, you won’t learn.

Principle Of The Day: An Accurate Understanding Of Reality

Most people fight seeing what’s true when it’s not what they want it to be. That’s bad, because it is more important to understand and deal with the bad stuff since the good stuff will take care of itself.

Principle Of The Day: A Successful Life

People who achieve success and drive progress deeply understand the cause-effect relationships that govern reality and have principles for using them to get what they want. The converse is also true: Idealists who are not well grounded in reality create problems, not progress. 

What does a successful life look like? We all have our own deep-seated needs, so we each have to decide for ourselves what success is. I don’t care whether you want to be a master of the universe, a couch potato, or anything else—I really don’t. Some people want to change the world and others want to operate in simple harmony with it and savor life. Neither is better. Each of us needs to decide what we value most and choose the paths we take to achieve it.