Reinertsen's Principles is an amazing book. The way he combines lean, network engineering and all the rest to create an actually meaningful and coherent picture of product development is genius.

My favorites are Good to Great and Principles

* https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0...

* https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/150...

Principles by Ray Dalio. It provides a good principle-based decision making framework, and I also found his own principles to be interesting and insightful.

Principles is my best non-fiction read of 2017. Superbly written.

Thank you all for your excellent answers.

I just bought Principles of Neural Science (it's pretty damn expensive in South Africa), but I'll look at almost everything else mentioned here.

HN is awesome.

1. Principles by Ray Dalio

https://www.principles.com/

2. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

Well that's an interesting data point. Ray Dalio's Principles is another interesting data point on an alternative way to run an organization. These seem to me variations on a similar theme though.

They don't at all make the case for anarchy. The hierarchies are still there and still necessary.

Ray Dalio's Principles is such an amazing book. I use his 5-step process every single day. Here's a great summary for anyone interested. https://inside.bwater.com/publications/principles_excerpt

Ray Dalio's Principles I think is an interesting read for that area.

This article gets more into actual analysis of program state and execution: http://matt.might.net/articles/intro-static-analysis/

If you want to go deeper, Principles of Program Analysis is a popular reference: Principles of Program Analysis https://www.amazon.com/dp/3540654100/

Principles by Ray Dalio

This is a good start for crafting better mental models and thought frameworks before engaging others in meetings.

Principles by Ray Dalio changed my life and really helped me better understand that inwardly looking at and analyzing my emotional responses to problems at work and home set me up for failure and since reading it I've had such profound clarity of thought. I recommend that book to literally everyone.

Thanks for the list. Principles by Ray Dalio is next on my list. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami is one of my favorites ever. Murakami is such an amazing writer. Check out Kafka on the Shore and Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami, great books.

Principles by Ray Dalio, and its not even close. Best book of 2017 imo.

Principles by Ray Dalio, completely changed the way I think.

Currently in the middle of thinking fast and slow, and I think it may be happening again :p

I've read and can highly recommend the following three from the leadership list:

1. Turn The Ship Around: A True Story of Building Leaders by Breaking the Rules

2. The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter

3. Principles: Life and Work

- Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
- Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

~10 SQL Server/DW/BI books (not just on the desk but scattered everywhere)

Can you please share your opinion on "Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio"? It has popped up several times on HN and I am curious about what people think of the book.

* 'Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup' by John Carreyrou

* 'Who is Michael Ovitz' by Michael Ovitz

* 'High Growth Handbook' by Elad Gil

* 'Principles: Life and Work' by Ray Dalio

* '1491' & '1493' by Charles C. Mann

Dark Matter: A Novel (Fiction) - One of my favorite SF story so far. https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Matter-Novel-Blake-Crouch/dp/110...

Principle: Life and Work, Ray Dalio (Business & Decision- Making) - Very interesting and thoughtful book around building a meritocracy. https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/150...

Ray Dalio's Principles is becoming my favorite book of the year; despite it being ~500 pages, there's so much super relevant content to company building and generally very applicable principles that help with day to day conduct.

While most books I've read are tactical or strategic, this book talks about the philosophical -- especially recommended for founders beyond the scrappy MVP stage, perhaps a team > 10

Love it! Hope I get to hear it in the club / festival one day!

This is just straight dancing
https://soundcloud.com/guhcci/sonder

This one melts :) Love the 80s style with the deep background
https://soundcloud.com/guhcci/alight-demo/s-tgQ0GjLwC3Y
^ this one also distantly reminded me Principles of Geometry (Meanstream album), although, I would imagine this may be only me

Good To Great - https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0...

DOM Enlightenment - https://www.amazon.com/DOM-Scripting-Design-JavaScript-Docum...

Definitive XML Schema - https://www.amazon.com/Definitive-XML-Schema-Charles-Goldfar...

I am a better developer because of building my thinking about software around a deeper appreciation of data structures setting goals by focusing on personal considerations of ethics.

Books that have improved me but not my career:

Principles - https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Ray-Dalio-audiobook/dp/B07...

Lots and lots of fiction.

I read a couple of books this year. However, these two are the best among them.

12 Rules For Life by Jordan Peterson : A great book that can help you deal with the chaos life throws at you.

Principles by Ray Dalio : Another great book that offers practical advice on how to improve one's life and work through reflection and iteration.

I like Ray Dalio. I’m a big fan of his book, Principles and his favorite book recommendation, Lessons of History by the Durants.

However, his LinkedIn post is irresponsible and appears more to do with discrediting journalism than sticking to and stating the facts. It’s becoming more than apparent that some members of the 1% are increasingly threatened about the role that unfettered journalism and left-leaning politics has in critiquing their unchecked power in this time of historically significant inequality.

My top priority books:

    Software Requirements - Karl Wiegers

    Programming TypeScript - Boris Cherny

    Associate Cloud Engineer Study - Dan Sullivan

    Design Patterns - Gang of Four

    Refactoring - Kent Beck, Martin Fowler

    Programming Pearls - Jon Bentley

    Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler

    The Pragmatic Programmer - David Thomas, Andrew Hunt

    CSS: The Definitive Guide - Eric A. Meyer, Estelle Weyl

    Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers

    Head First Design Patterns - Eric Freeman, Bert Bates

    Code Complete - Steve McConnell

    Peopleware - Tim Lister, Tom DeMarco

    Clean Code - Robert C. Martin

    The Clean Coder - Robert C. Martin

    Clean Architecture - Robert C. Martin

    Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug

    Functional Design Patterns for Express.js - Jonathan Lee Martin

    The Surrender Experiment - Michael A. Singer

The best books I've ever read:

    Principles - Ray Dalio

    The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle

    The Effective Executive - Peter F. Drucker

    Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill

    Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink, Leif Babin

    Influence - Robert B. Cialdini

    The Startup Way - Eric Ries

    The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

    12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson

    Measure What Matters - John Doerr, Larry Page

    The Fish That Ate the Whale - Rich Cohen

    The E-Myth Revisited - Michael E. Gerber

    The Score Takes Care of Itself - Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh

    Management - Peter F. Drucker

    Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows

    Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne

If you haven't seen his video, How the Economic Machine Works, I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0

Also the way he runs Bridgewater is really interesting. It's structured with the goal to surface the best ideas and figure out which opinions are most likely to be correct. It's an "idea meritocracy" and a culture of radical transparency. Everything is recorded and made available to everyone else in the company. Employees are very candid, brutally honest, even with the CEO (Ray). He says a lot of people churn out in the first year or so, but those that get used to it love it and can't imagine working another way. His Ted Talk goes into quite a bit of detail about how it all works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXbsVbFAczg

His book Principles lays out the foundation. Excerpt: https://inside.bwater.com/publications/principles_excerpt Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/Bridgewater

"While everyone has the right to have questions and theories, only believable people have the right to have opinions. If you can't successfully ski down a difficult slope, you shouldn't tell others how to do it, though you can ask questions about it and even express your views about possible ways if you make it clear that you are unsure." -- #194 from Principles by Ray Dalio

Principles by Ray Dalio.

I worked, somewhat briefly and largely unsuccessfully, at Bridgewater Associates several years ago and while I strongly disagree with the utopian description of BW as a bastion of egoless radical transparency and all the great things that are supposed to come out of that sort of an environment, the book and the principles behind it are really enlightening. I do honestly think if all workplaces operated in the way the book describes there would be more successful companies in the world and happier people working in them.

Principles by Ray Dalio. My interpretation is that this book shows 'how to get what you want'.

That sounds so far up the chain of abstraction and generality, that it’s easy to dismiss the book. Don’t! The book is impressive partially because it manages to distill useful truths which are applicable at such a general level.

It's written by Ray Dalio, who is undoubtedly extraordinarily intelligent and remarkably determined to self-improve. He is the founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and consequently the 69th richest person in the world in 2015.

The firm itself is noted for it’s unique company culture. He believes that people can only improve through feedback and that there are strong social conventions and cognitive barriers which prevent people receiving the feedback they need. At Bridgewater, every meeting is recorded and broadcasted to the company. At any level in the company, if someone is being considered for a promotion, they will be invited for a discussion. Senior executives will discuss, in front of the candidate, the merits of whether to promote them or not.

The book contains elegant, simple, yet crucially important truths. They seem obvious at first sight, but he fleshes them out in such a way that you realise you don't really act consistently with those truths, even if you perhaps trick yourself into believing that you do. Through reading the book, you can internalise some of his approaches in understanding the world.

It’s a book which altered my way of thinking about the world in a profound way.

PDF link here: http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...

I'm reading Principles by Ray Dalio. In it he mentions how Bridgewater had been using myer-briggs to test and measurement their employees personalities.

I've always been dismissive of the myer-briggs test. Since the tests are "not reproducable", must mean it's at best a pseudo-science.

But then I realized, who am I to dismiss the idea? I'm not an expert. Much smarter people than I (Dalio) believe in it. At the end of the day, does it help us move closer to understanding the differences between our minds?

I'd say yes it does. It may not be a "perfect" 100% correct model, but at least it's a step towards a direction.

I am really glad to see Mans Search for Meaning on here for another year in a row. It is a short read with a very powerful message.

A few others I would really like to see on this list would be:

- Principles by Ray Dalio

- Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

- Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

One of the last times this popped up, I printed it out and annotated it. I wanted to see if it was possible to take something so different to my working world (risk management) and apply it. Annotating it for my situation made it clear that this document should be seen as more far-reaching than just differentiating product managers. It really is pointing out the difference between good workers and bad workers in any organisation.

Every single point made has an element that can be applied to any organisation and career; Productive workers understand the context of business ("Good PMs take all important factors..."); successful workers solve the issue, not the symptom ("Good [PMs]...proper deeper into the [problem]"). Sometimes I look back at my annotated pages and score myself about whether I fall to "Bad" or to "Good". I'm still working at it.

I urge everybody to read, and apply this to their own careers. Don't pigeonhole this document just because it is defined as important to product managers. I see this as just as influential as Ray Dalio's Principles (http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...)

It depends how far into economics you want to get (and remember, I am not at all an economist, just an interested layperson).

A good book for getting started, IMO, is Charles Wheelan's "Naked Economics".

The first thing that I read was "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell, which I liked a lot and highly recommend - however, keep in mind that Thomas Sowell is very capitalist/right leaning, and the book is quite "biased".

A great textbook, if you really want to get further into economics, is Greg Mankiw's Principles of Economics (almost all undergrad economics textbooks are called "Principles of Economics", for some reason, so you have to search by author.) That's definitely the place to go if you want to have a more sophisticated understanding of economics than you'll just get by reading books.

Read your list, we have a bunch of books in common

Why Nations Fail (was an interesting read!)

Thinking Fast and Slow (This was on a lot of trader desks and was a good read.)

The Elephant In The Brain (this is the first audiobook i have ever listed to, agree, highly underrated.)

Principles (many years ago, I worked at BW for around 4 years... It was required reading, but remains one of my top recommended books. I actually own a copy of his original principals, and still bought the hard cover. Dalio's deep thinking is amazing).

“Thinking in Bets” by Annie Duke takes you through a specific model.

“Principles” by Ray Dalio gives a mesh of models that Ray has learnt or improved.

- Hpmor, from Yudkowsky the guy who created the ML Research Institute, simply one of the funniest and smartest book I ever read.

- Martin Eden, a great tragic adventure from the late 19th century about a poor smart guy from the slums who tries to make his riches as a writer

- The Moon is Harsh Mistress, Elon’s favorite sci-fi books

- Foundation by Asimov

- Homo Deus by Harari

- Principles by Ray Dalio

Class books, by established, no bullshit authors.

Joe Armstrong, Odersky, Stroustrup ("a tour" and "principles and practice", both latest editions, are finally good reads), the Go book by Kernighan is a decent one, etc.

Avoid blogs, shitty books by amateurs who are learning while writing (everything by Pact, lol) and other fast food.

Avoid everything related to Java or JavaScript - poorly designed crap, and focus on Scala, Haskell, Erlang, Go and Rust - attempts to fix the fucking mess we are in.

Ray Dailio's new book Principles deals a lot with this sort of idea. He is a huge fan of creating formulas to assist with prediction. Also, writing down problems and your solution to that problem so that you can go back and see if your solution was effective, and if not, what went wrong and what you can change to get the desired result.

Why Nations Fail (amazing!)

Chimpanzee Politics (interesting)

Corporate Confidential (paranoid, but worth a read)

Developer Hegemony (red pill for developers!!!)

Bargaining For Advantage (reasonable)

Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision Making (abstract as hell but rewarding)

Thinking Fast and Slow (loved it)

The Elephant In The Brain (seriously underrated)

The Brain That Changes Itself (inspirationally freaky)

The Power of Habit (good!)

The Secret Barrister (mildly disturbing)

Thinking In Systems (huge fan of this book!)

A Short History of Truth (meh...)

Man's Search For Meaning (brooo... I am so sorry)

Thinking In Bets (meh.. really meh)

The Road To Ruin (alright. Interesting even.)

Lying For Money (lots of fun!)

Great Answers To Tough Interview Questions (what it says on the tin)

Traction (good overview of marketing tactics)

Lean Customer Development (pretty good)

The Mom Test (eye opening)

Lean B2B (solid playbook)

Principles (instant classic)

Allow me to change your view. What irks me are sentences like these

> The great investor and teacher Benjamin Graham..

> Smart people like Charlie Munger..

> Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the finest thinkers in the world..

There is no mention in the article as to why I should believe they are as smart as the author believes them to be. (Hint: They made a lot of money and their advice seems rational, so they should be smart?). No doubt they are great investors (they made a lot of money), and I would follow their advice in money matters. But I question their credibility as extraordinary thinkers.

Notice how this type of content is marketed and perceived. Specifically, any advice by investors/CEO/Entrepreneur (or other individuals whose primary experience has been in making money/increasing market value) being touted as general success mantras (including in your personal life). Principles by Ray Dalio being a recent example. And as I mentioned, I believe this is a product of the neo-liberal ideology that has taken over our society.

No Easy Day by Mark Owen. It is about the seal team who killed Osama Bin Laden. I thought the book had a ton I action and was very captivating.

I’m currently about half way through Principles by Ray Dalio and am enjoying it so far.

Next on my reading list is The coddling of the American mind, by Greg Lukianoff

>> Principles by Ray Dalio

>> The Expanse (novel series) - I was introduced to it several years ago and have been meaning to get to it for awhile. I heard it now has a TV series and the next book in the series is supposed to come out this.

After reading "Principles" by Ray Dalio [1], I think the winner was pronounced a bit too soon.

[1] https://www.principles.com/the-changing-world-order/

- Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter

- Principles, Ray Dalio

- L'Etranger, Albert Camus

- Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire

- The Dao of Capital, Mark Spitznagel

- Howl, Allen Ginsberg

- On the Road, Jack Kerouac

I could go on and on...

I found the clarity of your thinking and writing refreshing, it's rare for someone to observe and recognize these archetypes. I by and large agree with how you see it.

One thing jumped out:

>> I think some people are just wired that way, or perhaps set on that course by environmental factors early in life. Either way, it's not a choice. So I think it's somewhat of a tragic condition.

and

>> My advice would be that if you're consistently getting negative feedback about personality traits from others, take it seriously.

If you think about it these two comments are contradictory. Either you are a victim of your programming, or you have the power to (slowly and painfully) recognize it and change.

I am a firm believer that people ultimately can recognize their problems and change. Recognition is the harder part. For most of us, to recognize the really deep and ugly things about ourselves is really hard and often is only done when someone has hit bottom and are forced to confront that there's something wrong. It's easy to say "listen to feedback" but it's impossible to convince someone they should until they've had some painful experience that forced them to recognize there's something that needs to be heard. But it's possible and important.

The other thought as I was reading your comment - I think you'll enjoy Ray Dalio's Principles book.

Principles - Ray Dalio
Jay Z: Made in America - Michael Eric Dysson
The Design of Web APIs - Arnaud Lauret

seems to be responding with Rampart-esq canned generic answers without any real substance to them.

Q: Seeing as we are almost 10 years into a bull market, would you be willing to share some of your big Economic and Investment Principles so that average folks can be protected during the inevitable bear market?

A: Think about how to rotate your portfolio to buy that which is cheap and sell that which is expensive.

Q: o you have any rules for segmenting your schedule (is there a specific allocated amount of time for personal, family, or business) and if so, what does that look like?

A: If you have my book Principles, there’s one about this idea, Prioritize: While you can have virtually anything you want, you can’t have everything you want.

Q: What is the number 1 thing a young investor can do to improve their investing abilities?

A: Dive into the markets, have the shit kicked out of you, and learn how to do things differently.

Yea no shit, great "advice".

- Principles by Ray Dalio

- Why We Sleep

- Seeking Wisdom, from Darwin to Munger.

Just yesterday I saw an ad for Ray's book in the print WSJ. Full page. It was filled with quotes from people you've heard of giving 1 line compliments of essentially no substance in particular.

Some of them are on this page:

https://www.principles.com/

The first one (was on the middle of the print ad page) was from Bill Gates who said

"Ray Dalio HAS PROVIDED ME WITH INVALUABLE GUIDANCE".

Ray was someone who has agree to Bill's Billionaire Pledge idea and no doubt they rub elbows. So honestly he isn't even referring to what is in the book and why would Bill Gates even need advice from Ray? I am sure he gave him private investment ideas ... great.

Most are really lame (with no creativity or specificity) like Mark Benioff who says

"PRINCIPLES BY RAY DALIO IS A MASTERPIECE IT'S A MUST READ!"

Actually all of the quotes are all caps.

Here is what I'd like to see. Not quotes from people who have made it who have (obviously) been asked to submit a quote (they all trade quotes with each other, right). But by real people who have read a book and can document something they learned and how it helped them in their life in a specific nature.

Also I always wonder why a billionaire seems to need to write a book like this to begin with.

> Nathan Robinson, who is a self described socialist, is not someone I would go to for an objective assessment of a hedge fund's working conditions.

I'm glad you didn't have a bad time working there. Yes, of course you can disagree with NR's conclusions, yet the article is mainly a review of Dalio's book alongside some quotes from employees. This "public hangings" statement is picked straight out of his Principles book. Is any of that source material being misrepresented or unfair in your opinion, having worked there?

I'm curious about the thing with the "overseers", "captains", "dots" and "baseball cards". Is that really a thing or not?

> Each day, employees are tested and graded on their knowledge of the Principles. They walk around with iPads loaded with the rules and an interactive rating system called “dots” to evaluate peers and supervisors. The ratings feed into each employee’s permanent record, called the “baseball card.”

Check out Principles by Ray Dalio. Specifically, the Life Principles chapter.

These are my 10 favourites:

- Total Freedom by J Krishnamurti

- Wit and Wisdom from Poor Richard’s Almanack: Benjamin Franklin

- Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

- The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius by Marcus Aurelius

- 10% Human: How Your Body’s Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness by Alanna Collen

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig

- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami

- Damn Right!: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger by Janet Lowe

- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari

- The Complete Adventures of Feluda (Volume 1) by Satyajit Ray

If you have tried to build a business and failed then read “The Anatomy of Peace” or “Leadership and Self Deception” same writer, same message.

If you have build a business and want to do it even better, then “Principles” by Ray Dalio

Both are about mindset and worldview - something I am learning now is much more important in tools and marketing hacks and knowing what to do in every situation.

Yes, I agree that GTD isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

David Allen, in GTD, recommends an alphabetized system. Something that I don't do because all of my reference material is digitized and easily searchable.

Search-ability is the primary reason I avoid keeping a large physical file system.

I take inspiration from multiple books written about productivity and organization. Other books that have been highly influential in my systems are:

- Principles (Dalio)

- The ONE Thing (Keller)

- Organize Tomorrow Today (Selk, Bartow)

- Productivity Planner (more of a journal than a book)

It’s just a doc that I printed out. The hardest part was actually coming up with it, and then narrowing it down to just the most important things so that the whole thing fits on one page. It’s partially inspired by Ray Dalio’s “Principles” book.

Examples:

- If not "hell yes" then "no."

- Everything can survive one hour.

- If it's <$100 and benefits well being, productivity, or revenue: Buy it. If >$100 decide by Friday.

- No calls on Fridays.

1. Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
2. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker

3. Tribes by Seth Godin

4. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche

5. The Industries of the Future by Alex Ross

6. Bigger, Leaner, Stronger by Michael Matthews

7. The Science of Getting Rich: Financial Success Through Creative Thought by WALLACE D. WATTLES (The Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reads)

8. Money: Master the Game by Tony Robbins

9. Principles by Ray Dalio

10. Como Ganar Amigas e Influir Sobre las Personas by Dale Carnegie

11. Without Their Permission by Alexis Ohanian

12. Tribe by Sebastian Junger

13. Sapiens A Brief History of Humanity by Yuval Noah Harari

14. This is Water by David Foster Wallace

15. How Not to Be Wrong. The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg

16. Walt Disney By Neal Gabler

17. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

18. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger

19. The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason

20. A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine

Out of all these, I would recommend only a few:

- Sapiens

- The Rational Optimist

- Walt Disney By Neal Gabler

- How Not to Be Wrong. The Power of Mathematical Thinking.

- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

https://www.principles.com/ is the full site for his Principles of Success. There's a good interview with Ray Dalio on the Freakonomics podcast: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ray-dalio/ . He talks about his principles, how he applied them, etc. He skirts around the challenges he's had stepping back from the company, but the lines are there to read between. (If you haven't already read about it elsewhere)

It's unclear to me whether Bridgewater's success is due to Ray's principles or more to having Ray and his judgement lead the investment team. And holy shit, some of the descriptions of Bridgewater I've read have made it sound one step removed from Lord of the Flies. The Paradise of Radical Candour is only 10 EQ points away from The Tire Fire of Negative Emotional Externalities.

My notes on reading the overview linked in the parent.

Principles of Effectuation:

- Start with your means - possibilities originate from my means

- Focus on the downside risk - what can I afford to lose at each step?

- Leverage contingencies - surprises/"bad" news are clues to new markets (pivot)

- Form partnerships - early pre-commitments from stakeholders for venture co-creation

- Control vs. predict - focus on activities in my control, not predictions

Effectuation process for building new products, markets, and firms:

1. Means: who am I, what I know, whom I know

2. Goals: what can I do?

- Pursue goals within affordable loss

- Leverage surprises - may add to Means and change Goals

3. Interactions: interact with people, enlist co-creation to change original idea

4. Commitments: gather stakeholder/customer commitments to co-created/morphed idea

- New means - new resources add to Means

- New goals - new commitments help crystallize the Goals

6. ‘Principles‘ (pdf) by Ray Dalio.

Tried reading it. His life storey reads like an entrepreneur who started by trying to fit in (held several corporate jobs), failed (fired for insubordination) then started his own company.

The rest reads like a self-help book written by an amateur. Some gushing about physics and natural history (which a HBS graduate probably finds unfathomable and mysterious). Then some deep discussion of his own inner psyche; why do successful people assume its their own uniquness that made them succeed and not, for instance, market conditions or good advice?

Then I gave up. Is very wordy, very very wordy, and not many of the words worth slogging through. At least the part I saw.

Principles by Ray Dalio

I respectfully disagree here. Having worked in the industry for many years (now at a startup) the review process was deeply flawed. Because it happened once a year and your bonus was tied to it people always erred on the side of providing 100% positive and thus superficial feedback. There wasn't a mechanism to know where you really stood and how you could get better. I'm not saying this is the solution in itself but the current low touch twice a year process which is minimally invasive is a disaster in my opinion. I think this solution has merit as it takes a page out of Ryan Dalio's Principles which is to shorten the feedback loop as quickly and as much as possible.

What I think would be interesting is to see behaviorial benchmarks for employees that are auto tracked. I sat next to kids that always printed 5+ extra color copies of 100 page presentations just in case. That could cost the desk 20k over the course of the year. banks have no way of knowing if employees are going out of their way to be efficient, save costs, or be productive other than subjective year end measures. bottom line is as someone in the industry I think this is a positive step forward and wanted to throw that in the mix for consideration.

It was towards the end of 2017 that I got my hands on Principles a book written by Ray Dalio, CEO of the biggest Hedge Fund firm in the World — Bridgewater Associates. I had already read the summary version of Principles by then and was a big admirer of his efforts to build a team based on meritocracy. But one of the best parts of the book that I could relate with was the section under “Work Principles” where he explains how he tried to build a culture in which it is okay to make mistakes and unacceptable not to learn from them.

He goes onto elaborate how his company ended up losing to the tune of hundreds of thousand of dollars because of a careless mistake by one of his employees. He understood that letting the person go would build a culture that’s averse to failures and came up with a public log where everyone should list down the mistakes they commit, explain how it impacted the customers / company in detail and with reflection on how it could be avoided in the future. Everyone is expected to read the error logs and this has helped them avoid recurring mistakes or failures while also building a culture that encourages the team to move fast and break things. More about our adaptation of error logs in the blog post.

Principles by Ray Dalio

Piggybacking on this, it seems like a lot of folks in finance who have reached the top of the mountain during previous economic conditions that no longer exist are trying to take that (mostly) luck, (some) wisdom, and wealth, and parlay it in to status [1] because there's not much left to grasp for when you're a billionaire (Buffet, Dalio, etc) and you want to hold on to relevance as the sun sets.

I admit I bought Dalio's book Principles (you got a free gift card for charity in the amount of the book, so why not) and I was not impressed with the ideology conveyed as keys to success.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190722191157/https://threadrea...

If you want to learn the fundamentals of accounting, the best intro I've seen is "Frank Wood's Business Accounting Volume 1".

For analysing companies, start with "Principles of Corporate Finance" which covers both the investment question (what the company should do) and the financing question (where to get the money to do those things).

For more on analysing companies, check out study resources for the CFA, or anything written by Aswath Damodaran.

But you should probably spend your time on more core activities for now. You would be better off focusing on the content of:

- Disciplined Entrepreneurship

- Venture Deals

- any blog post about SaaS economics (CAC, LTV etc.) regardless of whether you're starting a SaaS company

Just signed up for answering this. I recently had the same issue and found a fantastic (and hackable via JS/CSS!) tool: https://gingkoapp.com/app

Highly recommended. I use it for creating my daily todos out of life goals (I use the template/concept of Ray Dalio's Principles (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsd...) for this).

The Black Swan (anything by Taleb really), Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, Epictetus' Discourses, Fish that ate the whale by Rich Cohen, Man's Search for Meaning, Titan, Principles by Ray Dalio (not really a book, but really worth reading, plus it's free), 4HW by Tim Ferris, The Strategy Paradox.

Also Teddy Roosevelt's biography has been very influential.

Principles of traditional animation applied to 3D computer animation. By John Lasseter of Pixar fame, breaking down the infamous Luxo Jr animation.

http://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/cps124/fall01/resources/p35-l...

Dietary pesticides (99.99% all natural). By Bruce Ames, inventor of the Ames test on how virtually all of our toxic chemical ingestion comes from natural, plant sources. And completely destroying the myth of organic food being less harmful.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/87/19/7777.pdf

A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples. The only paper in history to be condemned by the US House of Representatives.

http://www.psycnet.org/journals/bul/124/1/22.pdf