Summary

Ray Dalio lays out his values, his principles, that guide his life and his management philosophy. He has built each of these principles into Bridgewater from the beginning and made sure to hire people who fit into this culture. A fantastic way to approach life that can be translated into any walk of life and/or company culture

Key Takeaways:

Having principles is extremely important because otherwise you have no framework on which to base decisions and events

The most important principles are those which we experience directly and reflect on - not those we are taught or told to accept

Extreme truthfulness - removing filters allows questions, issues, etc. to be raised immediately and answered. Most people/companies are too afraid or filtered to have these types of conversations but this is where growth happens and what separates the goods from the greats

Mistakes are something to look forward to as this is where learning happens. How you approach mistakes is what separates the good from the great

What I got out of it:

I will attempt to live my life by many of these principles. It will serve as a guide for the way I make decisions, approach mistakes, learn and decide which people I want to surround myself with. Without a doubt worth reading and can be found for free, here.

Introduction

Part 1 - purpose and importance of having principles in general

Part 2 - Ray's most fundamental principles that guides everything he does

Part 3- Ray's management principles which are in effect at Bridgewater

Wants us to decide what we want, what is true and what to do about it

Principles are concepts that can be applied over and over again in similar circumstances as distinct from narrow answers to specific questions.

I have thought hard about them, they have worked well for me for many years, and while they have stood up to the scrutiny of the hundreds of smart, skeptical people, I also believe that nothing is certain

The principles that are most valuable to each of us come from our own encounters from reality and our reflections of these encounters, not from being taught or simply accepting other's principles

Part 1 - The Importance of Principles

Principles connect your values to your actions

Without principles you'd be forced to react without thinking about your values and what you want

Holding incompatible principles can lead to conflict between values and actions

Your personal principles will determine your standards of behavior and how you interact with others

Question - What do you value most deeply?

For me, it is love. Somebody who loves regardless of others or their situation

Part 2 - My Most Fundamental Life Principles

In trying to learn how to beat the market, Dalio has learned:

Work for what you want, not what others want you to do

Come up with independent opinions and then stress-test them against the smartest people you can find to see where you're wrong

What he wants most of all for those working with him are to work for yourself, come up with independent opinions, stress-test them, be wary about being overconfident and reflect on the consequences of your decisions and constantly improve

Limit bets to the limited number of things you are confident in

Started investing in commodities future because margins were low, then learned a lot about currency and eventually ran a commodities division on wall street until being fired for insubordination. He then started Bridgewater

What he has learned since starting Bridgewater:

Truth - more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality - is the essential foundation for producing good outcomes

The quality of our lives depends on the quality of the decisions we make

The one quality that those who make the right choice have, it is character - the ability to get one's self to do the difficult things that produce the desired results

Success is nothing more than getting what you want - what is essential is that you are clear about what you want and that you figure out how to get it

Personal evolution is both the greatest accomplishment and the greatest reward

People need meaningful work and meaningful relationships in order to be fulfilled

If you can reflect deeply about your problems, they almost alway shrink or disappear because you almost always find a better way of dealing with them than if you don't face them head on. The more difficult the problem, the more important it is that you think deeply

Those who are most successful are capable of higher level thinking - able to step back and design a "machine" consisting of the right people doing the right things to get what they want

The biggest mistake most people make is not to see themselves and others objectively. If they could get around this, they could live up to their potentials

5 Steps to getting what you want out of life

In the long run, doing the things that will make you successful is a lot easier than being unsuccessful (el flojo trabaja el doble!)

Identifying problems is like finding gems embedded in puzzles; if you solve puzzles you will get the gems that will make your life much better

One of the best ways of arriving at truth is reflecting with others who have opposing views and who share your interest in finding the truth rather than being proven right

Ask yourself what is your biggest weakness that stands in the way of what you want. Successful people find and address these weaknesses, unsuccessful people don't. Important to have people or a team around you who are truthful and caring enough to show you your weaknesses because often it is very hard for us to see our own

Life is like a game where you seek to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving your goals

In order to be happy, we have to be excellent and continue to improve at a surprisingly fast rate. Must be hyperrealistic and hypertruthful for this to happen. Biggest impediment to making this happen is the willingness to face their own mistakes and weaknesses and those of others

True caring means recognizing and successfully dealing with our realities, whatever they are. In no way does caring mean being soft

Part III - My Management Principles

A great company requires both a great culture and great people

If there are too few and/or bad quality feedback loops there will be a decline because you won't identify and deal with the problems that will kill you

The most important difference between great organizations and bad ones is in how well they manage their feedback loops

Ray's ~200 principles:

Trust in truth

Realize you have nothing to fear from truth

Create an environment in which everyone has the right to understand what makes sense and no one has the right to hold a critical opinion without speaking up about it

Be extremely open - leads to truth and trust (don't filter)

Have integrity and demand it from others

Never say anything about a person you wouldn't say to them directly and don't try people without accusing them to their face

Don't let "loyalty" stand in the way of truth and openness

Be radically transparent

Record almost all meeting and share them with all relevant people

Don't tolerate dishonesty

Don't believe it when someone caught being dishonest says they have seen the light and will never do that sort of thing again

Create a culture in which it is OK to make mistakes but unacceptable not to identify, analyze and learn from them

Recognize that effective, innovative thinkers are going to make mistakes

Do not feel bad about your mistakes or those of others. Love them!

Observe the patterns of mistakes to see if they are a product of weaknesses

Do not feel bad about your weaknesses or those of others

Don't worry about looking good - worry about achieving your goals. Most valuable comments are accurate criticisms

Get over "blame" and "credit" and get on with "accurate" and "inaccurate"

Don't depersonalize mistakes. Identifying who made the mistake(s) is essential for learning

Write down your weaknesses and the weaknesses of others to help remember and acknowledge them

When you experience pain, remember to reflect. This is the ultimate time to test yourself to see if you can learn and grow from your pain

Be self-reflective and make sure your people are self-reflective. When experiencing pain, don't revert to fight or flight - reflect

Teach and reinforce the merits of mistake-based learning

The most valuable tool we have for this is the issues log which is aimed at identifying and learning form mistakes

Constantly get in Sync - constantly search for alternative viewpoints

Constantly get in sync about what is true and what to do about it

Talk about "is it true?" and "does it make sense?"

Fight for right

Be assertive and open-minded at the same time

Ask yourself whether you have earned the right to have an opinion

Recognize that you always have the right to have and ask questions

Distinguish open-minded people from closed-minded people

Don't have anything to do with closed-minded, inexperienced people

Be wary of the arrogant intellectual who comments form the stands without having played on the field

Watch out for people who think it's embarrassing not to know

Make sure responsible parties are open-minded about the questions and comments of others

Recognize that conflicts are essential for great relationships because they are the means by which people determine whether their principles are aligned and resolve their differences - don't let the little issues slide as this always results in a big blow up later

Expect more open-minded disagreements at Bridgewater than at most other firms

There is giant untapped potential in disagreement, especially if the disagreement is between two or more thoughtful people

Know when to stop debating and move on to agreeing about what should be done - more important to do the big things well than the small things perfectly

However, when people disagree on the importance of debating something, it should be debated

Recgonize that "there are many good ways to skin a cat"

For dissagreemtns to have a positive effect, people evaluating an individual decision or decision-maker must view the issue within a broader context

Distinguish between idle complaints and complaints that are meant to lead to improvement

Appreciate that open debate is not meant to create rule by referendum

Evaluate whether an issue calls for debate, discussion or teaching

To avoid confusion, make clear which kind of conversation (debate, discussion or teaching) you are having

Communication aimed at getting the best answer should involve the most relevant people

Communication aimed at educating or boosting cohesion should involve a broader set of people than would be needed if the aim were just getting the best answer

Leverage your communication (open e-mails to a FAQ board to be time efficient)

Don't treat all opinions as equally valuable

A hierarchy of merit is not only consistent with a meritocracy of ideas but essential for it

Consider your own and others' "believabilities" - probability that a person's views will be right

Ask yourself whether you have earned the right to have an opinion - it is much more difficult to have an opinion (a proper one at least) than most understand

People who have repeatedly and successfully accomplished the thing in question and have great explanations when probed are most believable. The less of a track record someone has, the more questions they should have and the more experience the more assertive they should be

If someone asks you a question, think first whether you're the responsible party/right person to be answering the question

Spend lavishly on the time and energy you devote to "getting in sync" because it's the best investment you can make

If it is your meeting to run, manage the conversation

Make it clear who the meeting is meant to serve and who is directing the meeting

Make clear what type of communication you are going to have in light of the objectives and priorities - the worst people to choose to have in meetings with you are those who's views align with yours

Lead the discussion by being assertive and open-minded

A small group (3 to 5) of smart, conceptual people seeking the right answers in an open-minded way will generally lead to the best answer

1+1 = 3 - two smart people working together are much more effective than if working alone

Navigate the levels of the conversation clearly

Watch out for "topic slip" - come to a conclusion on a topic before moving on

Enforce the logic of conversations

Worry about substance more than style

Achieve completion in conversations - state the conclusion before moving on

Have someone assigned to maintain notes in meetings and make sure follow-through happens

Be careful not to lose personal responsibility via group decision making

Make sure people don't confuse their right to complain, give advice and debate with the right to make decisions

Recognize that getting in sync is a two-way responsibility

Escalate if you can't get in sync

Recognize the most important decisions you make are who you choose to be responsible party

Remember that almost everything good comes from having great people operating in a great culture

First, match the person to the design

Most importantly, find people who share your values - drive for excellence, truth at all costs, a high sense of ownership and a strong sense of character

Look for people who are willing to look at themselves objectively and have character - what Ray respects most in people

Conceptual thinking and common sense are required in order to assign someone the responsibility for achieving goals (as distinct form tasks)

Recognize that the inevitable party is the person who bears the consequences of what is done

By and large, you will get what you deserve over time

The most important responsible parties are those who are most responsible for the goals, outcomes, and machines (they are those higher in the pyramid)

Choose those who understand the difference between goals and tasks to run things

Recognize that people are built very differently

Think about their very different values, abilities and skills

Understand that each person who works for you is like so that you know what to expect from them

Recognize that the type of person you fit in the job must match the requirements for that job

Use personality assessment tests and quality reflections on experiences to help you identify these differences

Understand that different ways of seeing and thinking make people suitable for different jobs

People are best at the jobs that require what they do well

If you're not naturally good at one type of thinking, it doesn't mean you're precluded from paths that require that type of thinking

Don't hide these differences. Explore them openly with the goal of figuring out how you and your people are built so you can put the right people in the right jobs and clearly assign responsibilities

Remember that people who see things and think one way often have difficulty communicating and relating to people who see things and think another way

Hire right, because the penalties of hiring wrong are huge

Think through what values, abilities and skills you are looking for

Weigh values and abilities more heavily than skills in deciding whom to hire

Write the profile of the person you are looking for into the job description

Select the appropriate people and tests for assessing each of these qualities and compare the results of those assessments to what you've decided is needed for the job

Remember that people tend to pick people like themselves, so pick interviewers who can identify what you are looking for

Understand how to use and interpret personality tests

Pay attention to people's track records

Dig deeply to discover why people did what they did - understanding the why helps you understand that person's values

Recognize that performance in school, while of some value in making assessments doesn't tell you much about whether the person has the values and abilities you are looking for

Ask for past reviews

Check references

Look for people who have lots of great questions

Make sure candidates interview you and Bridgewater

Don't hire people just to fit the first job they will do at Bridgewater, hire people you want to share your life with

Look for people who sparkle, not just "another one of those"

Hear the click: find the right fit between the role and the person

Pay for the person, not for the job

Recognize that no matter how good you are at hiring, there is a high probability that the person you hire will not be the great person you need for the job

Manage as someone who is designing and operating a machine to achieve the goal

Understand the difference between managing, micromanaging and not managing - managing requires you to understand how well your people and designs are working to achieve your goal and then refining this system

Managing the people who report to you should feel like "skiing together"

An excellent skier is probably going to be more critical and a better critic of another skier than a novice skier

Constantly compare your outcomes to your goals

Look down on your machine and yourself within it from the higher level - have the proper perspective

Connect the case at hand to your principles for handling cases of that type

Conduct the discussion at two levels when a problem occurs - the "machine" level discussion of why the machine produced that outcome and the "case at hand" discussion of what to do now about the problem

Don't try to be followed; try to be understood and to understand others

Don't try to control people by giving them orders

Communicate the logic and welcome feedback - explain the principles and logic behind decisions

Clearly assign responsibilities - eliminate any confusion about expectations

Hold people accountable and appreciate them holding you accountable

Distinguish between failures where someone broke their "contract" from ones where there was no contract to begin with

Avoid the "sucked down" phenomenon - when manager gets brought down to do the tasks of a subordinate without acknowledging the problem

Watch out for people who confuse goals and tasks because you can't trust people with responsibilities if they don't understand the goals

Think like an owner, and expect the people you work with to do the same

Force yourself and the people who work for you to do difficult things

Hold yourself and others accountable

Don't worry if your people like you; worry about whether you are helping your people and Bridgewater to be great

Know what you want and stick to it if you believe it's right, even if others want to take you in another direction

Communicate the plan clearly

Have agreed-upon goals and tasks that everyone knows (from the people in the departments to the people outside the departments who oversee them)

Watch out for the unfocused and unproductive "we should...(do something"

Constantly get in sync with your people

Get a "threshold level of understanding"

Avoid staying too distant

Tool - use daily updates as a tool for staying on top of what your people are doing and thinking

Learn confidence in your people - don't presume it

Vary your involvement based on your confidence

Avoid the "theoretical should"

Care about the people who work for you

Logic, reason and common sense must trump everything else in decision making

While logic drives our decisions, feelings are very relevant

escalate when you can't adequately handle your responsibilities, and make sure that the people who work for you do the same

Make sure your people know to be proactive

Tool - an escalation button

Involve the person who is the point of the pyramid when encountering material cross-departmental or cross sub-departmental issues

Probe deep and hard to learn what to expect from your "machine"

Know what your people are like and make sure they do their jobs excellently

Constantly probe the people who report to you and encourage them to probe you

Remind the people you are probing that problems and mistakes are fuel for improvement

Probe the level below the people who work for you

Remember that few people see themselves objectively, so it's important to welcome probing and to probe others

Probe so that you have a good enough understanding of whether problems are likely to occur before they actually do

When a crisis appears to be brewing, contact should be so close that it's extremely unlikely that there will be any surprises

Investigate and let people know you are going to investigate so there are no surprises and they don't take it personally

Don't "pick your battles." Fight them all

Don't let people off the hook

Don't assume that people's answers are correct

Make the probing transparent rather than private

Evaluate people accurately, not "kindly"

Make accurate assessments

Use evaluation tools such as performance surveys, metrics and formal reviews to document all aspects of a person's performance. These will help clarify assessments and communication surrounding them

Maintain "baseball cards" and/or "believability matrixes" for your people - ratings, rankings, credentials, track record

Evaluate employees with the same rigor as your evaluate job candidates

Know what makes your people tick, because people are your most important resource

Recognize that while most people prefer compliments over criticism, there is nothing more valuable than accurate criticisms

Make this discovery process open, evolutionary and iterative

Provide constant, clear and honest feedback and encourage discussion of this feedback

Put your compliments and criticisms into perspective

Remember that convincing people of their strengths is generally much easier than convincing them of their weaknesses

Encourage objective reflection - lots and lots of it

Employee reviews - the goal of a review is to be clear about what the person can and cannot be trusted with and from there "what can I do about it" can be assessed

Understand that you and the people you manage will go through a process of personal evolution

Recognize that your evolution should be relatively rapid and a natural consequence of discovering your strengths and weaknesses; as a result, your career path is not planned at the outset

Remember that the only purpose of looking at what people did is to learn what they are like

Look at patterns of behaviors and don't read too much into any one event

Don't believe that being good or bad at some things means that the person is good or bad at everything

If someone is doing their job poorly, consider whether this is due to inadequate learning (training/experience) or inadequate ability

Remember that when it comes to assessing people, the two biggest mistakes are being overconfident in your assessment and failing to get in sync on that assessment. Don't make those mistakes

Get in sync in a non-hierarchical way regarding assessments

Learn about your people and have them learn about you with very frank conversations about their mistakes and their root causes

Help people through the pain that comes with exploring their weaknesses

Recognize that when you are really in sync with people about weaknesses, whether yours or theirs, they are probably true

Remember that you don't need to get to the point of "beyond a shadow of a doubt" when judging people

Understand that you should be able to learn the most about what a person is like and whether they are a "click" for the job in their first year

Continue assessing people throughout their time at Bridgewater

Train and test people through experiences

Understand that training is really guiding the process of personal evolution

Know that experience creates internalization

Provide constant feedback to put the learning in perspective

Remember that everything is a case study

Teach your people to fish rather than give them fish

Recognize that sometimes it is better to let people make mistakes so that they can learn from them rather than tell them the better decision

When criticizing, try to make helpful suggestions

Learn from success as well as from failure - point out people who are performing a job well so there is a role model to replicate

Know what types of mistakes are acceptable and unacceptable, and don't allow the people who work for you to make the unacceptable ones

Recognize that behavior modification typically takes about 18 months of constant reinforcement

Train people; don't rehabilitate them

A common mistake - training and testing a poor performer to see if he/she can acquire the required skills without simultaneously trying to assess their abilities

After you decide "what's true" (after you figure out what your people are like), think carefully about "what to do about it"

Sort people into other jobs at Bridgewater, or remove them from Bridgewater

When you find that someone is not a good "click" for a job, get them out of it ASAP

Know that it is much worse to keep someone in a job who is not suited for it than it is to fire someone

When people are "without a box," consider whether there is an open box at Bridgewater that would be a better fit. If not, fire them

Do not lower the bar

Know how to perceive problems effectively

Keep in mind the 5-step process explained in Part 2

Recognize that perceiving the problems is the first essential step toward great management

Understand that problems are the fuel for improvement

You need to be able to perceive if things are above the bar (good enough) or below the bar (not good enough) and you need to make sure your people can as well

Don't tolerate badness

"Taste the soup" - try out your product often and analyze it against your vision of what excellent should be

Have as many eyes looking for problems as possible

"Pop the cork"

Hold people accountable for raising their complaints

The people closest to certain jobs probably know them best, or at least have perspectives you need to understand, so those people are essential for creating improvement

To perceive problems, compare how the movie is unfolding relative to your script

Don't use the acronyms "we" and "they," because that masks personal responsibility - use specific names

Be veyr specific about problems; don't start with generalizations

Tool - use the following tools to catch problems - issue logs, metrics, surveys, checklists, outside consultants and inside auditors

The most common reason problems aren't perceived is what I call the "frog in the boiling water" problem - there is a strong tendency to get used to very bad things which would be shocking of seen with fresh eyes

In some cases, people accept unacceptable problems because they are perceived as being too difficult to fix. Yet fixing unacceptable problems is actually a lot easier than not fixing them, because not fixing them will make you miserable

Problems that have good, planned solutions are completely different from those that don't

Diagnose to understand what the problems are symptomatic of

Recognize that all problems are just manifestations of their root causes, so diagnose to understand what the problems are symptomatic of

Understand that diagnosis is foundational both to progress and quality relationships

Ask the following questions when diagnosing:

Ask what suboptimally did you experience?

Is there a clear responsible party for the suboptimality?

Ask responsible party what the "mental map" was supposed to work

Ask what, if anything, broke the situation

Ask why they handled the problem the way they did (root cause is not action or a reaction - it is a reason

Is this consistent with prior patterns?

Remember that a root cause is not an action but a reason

Identify which step failure occurred in the 5-step process

Remember that a proper diagnoses requires a quality, collaborative and honest discussion to get at the truth

Keep in mind that diagnoses should produce outcomes

Don't make too much out of one "dot" - synthesize a richer picture by squeezing lots of "dots" quickly and triangulating with others

Maintain an emerging synthesis by diagnosing continuously

To distinguish between a capacity issue and a capability issue, imagine how the person would perform at that particular function if they had ample capacity

The most common reasons managers fail to produce excellent results or escalate are they are too far removed, have problems discerning quality differences, have lost sight of how bad things have become, too much pride to admit poor work, fear adverse consequences from admitting failure

Avoid "monday morning quarterbacking" - hindsight is always 20/20 - imagine what could have reasonably been known when the decision was made

Identify the principles that were violated

Remember that if you have the same people doing the same things, you should expect the same results

Use the following "drilldown" technique to gain an 80/20 understanding of a department or sub-department that is having problems - list problems and causes/diagnoses, design a plan, execute, monitor and modify the plan. People perform poorly either because of insufficient training or insufficient ability. Your job as a manager to get at truth and excellence, not to make people happy

Put things in perspective

Go back before going forward

Tool - have all new employees listen to tapes of "the story" to bring them up to date

Understand "above the line" and "below the line" thinking and how to navigate between the two

Design your machine to achieve your goals

Remember, you are designing a "machine" or system that will produce outcomes

A short-term goal probably won't require you to build a machine

Beware of paying too much attention to what is coming at you and not enough attention to what your responsibilities are or how your machine should work to achieve your goals

Don't act before thinking. Take the time to come up with a game plan

The organizational design you draw up should minimize problems and maximize capitalization opportunities

Put yourself in the "position of pain" for a while so that you gain a richer understanding of what you're designing for

Recognize that design is an interative process; between a bad "now" and a good "then" is a "working through it" period

Visualize alternative machines and their outcomes, and then choose

Think about second and third-order consequences as well as first-order consequences

Most importantly, build the organization around goals rather than tasks

First come up with the best workflow design, sketch it out in an organizational chart, visualize how the parts interact, specify what qualities are required for each job, and , only after that is done, choose the right people to fill the jobs

Organize departments and sub-departments around the most logical groupings

Make departments as self-sufficient as possible so that they have control over the resources they need to achieve the goals

The efficiency of an organization decreases and the bureaucracy increases in direct relation to the increase in the number of people and/or the complexity of the organization

Build your organization from the top down

Everyone must be overseen by a believable person who has high standards

The people at the top of each pyramid should have the skills and focus to manage their direct reports and a deep understanding of their jobs

The ratio of senior managers to junior managers and to the number of people who work two levels below should be limited, to preserve quality communication and mutual understanding

The number of layers from top to bottom and the ratio of managers to their direct reports will limit the size of an effective organization (about 5 to 1)

The larger the organization, the more important are the information technology expertise in management and cross-departmental communication

Do not build the organization to fit the people

Have the clearest possible delineation of responsibilities and reporting lines

Create an organizational chart to look like a pyramid, with straight lines down that don't cross

Constantly think about how to produce leverage

You should be able to delegate the details away- if not your employees are either badly trained or they are the wrong people - manager should only have to worry about things going smoothly

It is far better to find a few smart people and give them the best technology than to have a greater number of ordinary and less well-equipped people

Use "leveragers"

Understand the clover-leaf design - 2 to 3 responsible parties who are willing to challenge and check each other (more likely to fight for what they believe in and sorting out issues earlier than they otherwise would be)

Don't do work for people in another department or grab people from another department to do work for you unless you speak to the boss

Watch out for "department slip"

Assign responsibilities based on workflow design and people's abilities, not job titles

Watch out for consultant addiction

Tool - maintain a procedure manual

Tool - use checklists

Don't confuse checklists with personal responsibility

Remember that "systematic" doesn't necessarily mean computerized

Use "double-do" rather than "double-check" to make sure mission-critical tasks are done correctly

Watch out for "job slip"

Think clearly how things should go and when they aren't going that way, acknowledge it and investigate

Have good controls so that you are not exposed to the dishonesty of others and trust is never an issue

People doing auditing should report to people outside the department being audited, and auditing procedures should not be made known to those being audited

Remember there is no sense in having laws unless you have policemen (auditors)

Do what you set out to do

Push through! - you must MAKE great things happen

Recognize the power of knowing how to deal with not knowing

Recognize that your goal is to come up with the best answer, that the probability of your having it is small, and that even if you have it, you can't be confident that you do have it unless you have other believable people test you

Understand that the ability to deal with not knowing is far more powerful than knowing

Embrace the power of asking "What don't I know, and what should I do about it?"

Finding the path to success is at least as dependent on coming up with the right questions as coming up with answers

Remember that your goal is to find the best answer, not to give the best one you have

While everyone has the right to have questions and theories, only believable people have the right to have opinions

Constantly worry about what you are missing

Successful people ask for the criticism of others and consider its merit

Triangulate your view - never make important decisions without asking at least 3 believable people and ask them to probe your own reasoning

Make all decisions logically, as expected value calculations

Considering both the probabilities and the payoffs of the consequences, make sure that the probability of the unacceptable (the risk of ruin) is nil

The cost of a bad decision is equal to or greater than the reward of a good decision, so knowing what you don't know is at least as valuable as knowing

Recognize opportunities where there isn't much to lose and a lot to gain, even if the probability of the gain happening is low

Understand how valuable it is to raise the probability that your decision will be right by accurately assessing the probability of your being right

Don't bet too much on anything. Make 15 or more good, uncorrelated bets

Remember the 80/20 Rule, and know what the key 20% is

Distinguish the important things from the unimportant things and deal with the important things first

Don't be a perfectionist

Since 80% of the juice can be gotten with the first 20% of the squeezing, there are relatively few (typically less than five) important things to consider in making a decision

Watch out for "detail anxiety"

Don't mistake small things for unimportant things, because some small things can be very important

Think about the appropriate time to make a decision in light of the marginal gains made by acquiring additional information versus the marginal costs of postponing the decision

Make sure all the "must do's" are above the bar before you do anything else

Remember that the best choices are the ones with more pros than cons, not those that don't have any cons. Watch out for people who tend to argue against something because they can find something wrong with it without properly weighing all the pros against the cons

Watch out for unproductively identifying possibilities without assigning them probabilities, because it screws up prioritization

Understand the concept and use the phrase "by and large"

When you ask someone whether something is true and they tell you that "it's not totally true," it's probably true enough

Synthesize

Understand and connect the dots

Understand what an acceptable rate of improvement is, and that it is the level and not the rate of change that matters most

If your best solution isn't good enough, think harder or escalate that you can't produce a solution that is good enough

Avoid the temptation to compromise on that which is uncompromisable

Don't try to please everyone