Axioms, philosophies, generators and tactics.
Definitions
My principles format does not follow Ray Dalio’s exactly and is more rigid.
- Axiom — Universally and timelessly true as the base truth.
- Philosophy — Ideas that are in-sync with achieving maximum leverage out of said axiom.
- Generator — Question, thought exercise or mindset that will guide to the right decision/tactic to take.
- Tactic — A short sequence of actions to maximize the expected return of a situation or get started with the said generator.
- Decision — Single, non-generalizable action in the world.
How to read the format:
Axiom 1: Axiom
Philosophy 1.1: Philosophy
Generator 1.1.1: Title — a more thorough explanation or tactics.
Axiom 1: Making an optimal learning-exploit tradeoff will maximize utility.
Philosophy 1.1: Recognize where you stand in terms of this tradeoff.
Recognizing where you stand will allow you to commit to exploitation or learning. Empirically, this is the biggest waste of resources I see.
Generator 1.1.1: Young people should adopt “learning” as their strategy most of the time.
Philosophy 1.2: Micro speed, macro patience. [Gary Vaynerchuck]
Maximize every day in days to weeks to months scale, but don’t expect anything good to happen without years of work. Young people often are impatient and fail to make significant progress on dimension because they switch too much.
Philosophy 1.3: Optimize the learning process.
Generator 1.3.1: Learn to love your pain. — “No pain, no gain” from Ray Dalio
Generator 1.3.2: Change has intrinsic value. —When you have equal utility for multiple options, then weight in unknown unknowns. There are usually much more of them in novel environments
Generator 1.3.3: Contradict intrinsic loss aversion. — Kahneman describes loss aversion as the motive to avoid losses as stronger than the motive to achieve gain. To use money as an example, we are likely to be motivated more to not lose money than we would be to make money. [Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman]
Generator 1.3.4: Iterate fast.
Generator 1.3.5: Investment in Loss. — A willingness to lose and analyze the loss, as well as the unsettled feelings that accompany it, cultivates flexibility. This, in turn, allows us to move forward and gain additional wisdom, no matter what we may encounter along our path. [Art of learning, Josh Waitzkin]
Generator 1.3.6: Test and measure. — Scientific mindset allows you to create non-fatal failures, see “Don’t fail badly”.
Generator 1.3.7: Don’t fail badly. — Often times most impactful failures are the painful ones. However, don’t fail in a way that takes you out of the game. To facilitate this, find ways to learn from non-fatal mistakes or from other people's experiences.
Philosophy 1.4: Optimize the exploit process.
Generator 1.4.1: Goal setting and accountability creates an evolutionary process for ideas and individuals.
Tactic 1.4.1.1: There can’t be more than 3 wildly important goals per team. No more than 1 per person.
Generator 1.4.2: Use data to stay honest with yourself about progress.
Generator 1.4.3: People have a natural bias against exploitation. [Algorithms to Live By, Brian Christian]
Axiom 2: An organized group has more potential energy than an individual.
Philosophy 2.1: Organised group should be more than the sum of its parts.
Generator 2.1.1: Specialize.
Generator 2.1.2: Create bottom-up thinking to eliminate bottlenecks from up top decision-makers. — Assign explicit ownerships of high-level goals; Allow autonomy and foster people’s ideas. If they are successful you gained a decision-maker instead of a follower.
Philosophy 2.2: Honest and transparent interaction with value-added creates lasting relationships.
Generator 2.2.1: Be transparent about your decisions, generators, philosophies, and axioms. In this order.
Generator 2.2.2: Find out what people want and/or need to create value. — This is also “people first” and “customer first” mindset, and much of what B2C product development usually is.
Tactic 2.2.2.1: Do your homework on a new person you will interact with a lot. If they have weird biases it might ruin the relationship. E.g. strong technical people sometimes expect their manager to be better than them technically.
Tactic 2.2.2.2: To help people grow, ask about their current level of skill, visualize it on the ladder and ask for examples of people that are on the next level. Let them find a way to the next level based on reference points.
Tactic 2.2.2.3: Don’t rush. When you want to get something from another person, time spent together, in the beginning, is a strong predictor of how much good collaboration you’ll have in the future. People don’t trust you unless a certain amount of time has passed. The chance of transitioning from casual friend to friend is greater than 50% after around 80–100 hr together. Furthermore, after getting what you want, leave space, the interaction might otherwise feel unpleasant for the other person.
Tactic 2.2.2.4: Listen. Often times people just want to be heard. It also makes it much easier to phrase your ideas in their words for better communication.
Philosophy 2.3: For every action, there is a roughly equal emotional reaction. [Everything Is F*cked, Mark Manson]
Generator 2.3.1: Make presents to others in terms of time, money and effort.¹
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle for gifts in relationship commitments.
