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.

Principle Of The Day: Be A Hyperrealist

Understanding, accepting, and working with reality is both practical and beautiful. I have become so much of a hyperrealist that I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of all realities, even harsh ones, and have come to despise impractical idealism. 

Don’t get me wrong: I believe in making dreams happen. To me, there’s nothing better in life than doing that. The pursuit of dreams is what gives life its flavor. My point is that people who create great things aren’t idle dreamers: They are totally grounded in reality. Being hyperrealistic will help you choose your dreams wisely and then achieve them.

"Listening to uninformed people is worse than having no answers at all." 
- Ray Dalio

Principle Of The Day: Embrace Reality

There is nothing more important than understanding how reality works and how to deal with it. The state of mind you bring to this process makes all the difference. I have found it helpful to think of my life as if it were a game in which each problem I face is a puzzle I need to solve. By solving the puzzle, I get a gem in the form of a principle that helps me avoid the same sort of problem in the future. Collecting these gems continually improves my decision making, so I am able to ascend to higher and higher levels of play in which the game gets harder and the stakes become ever greater.

What It Means to Be Principled and Why You Need to Do It

Having clearly written down principles = being crystal clear about what you stand for and how you will behave in various circumstances = having integrity = building trust = knowing your direction = being effective. It’s all about eliminating duality and having consistency of what you say you will do and what you actually do, regardless of who you are with and regardless of whether or not people are looking, and accomplishing what you set out to do. Being radically truthful and radically transparent is invaluable for doing that because it demonstrates that you are doing this and it holds you accountable for doing it. 

While I wrote my principles down, I urge you to have and write down your own principles, feeling free to take anyone’s you like. To help you do that, I’m planning to share one of mine or one of someone else’s every day over the next year or so. I’d like you to ask me questions about them here and then take them or leave them as you see fit. I will also be taking the best posts of people who are participating in this exercise and will share them with people more broadly. It should be fun and productive.

Work Principle Of The Day: See Things From The Higher Level

You are expected to go to the higher level and look down on yourself and others as part of a system. In other words, you must get out of your own head, consider your views as just some among many, and look down on the full array of points of view to assess them in an idea-meritocratic way rather than in your own possessive way. Seeing things from the higher level isn’t just seeing other people’s point of view; it’s also being able to see every situation, yourself & others as though you were looking down on them as an objective observer.

Work Principle Of The Day: Meritocracy vs Anarchy

Principle 6.4B: Never allow the idea meritocracy to slip into anarchy

In an idea meritocracy, there is bound to be more disagreement than in a typical organization, but when it’s taken to an extreme, arguing and nitpicking can undermine the idea meritocracy’s effectiveness.

Principle 2.1: Be loyal to the common mission

Be loyal to the common mission and not to anyone who is not operating consistently with it. Loyalty to specific people who are not in tight sync with the mission and how to achieve it will create factionalism and undermine the well-being of the community.