Principles

Recently I have been reading Principles by Ray Dalio. The core theme of the book is that you need a set of principles to live by that guide all the decisions that you make. It is not something you read cover to cover in a week or so, but something you read piece by piece over several months. The book includes Ray's own principles, however he suggest to have your own and write them down. Here are my principles.

This list is non-exhaustive, and will change and evolve over time.

Be Long Term Greedy

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good" - Gordon Gekko

Greed is good, but only long term greed. Long term greed amplifies your values.

To be long term greedy, you help your colleague in a different department on some weird problem they are having even though it provides no immediate benefit to you. That builds your reputation, even with only 1 person, and you never know when that will come back and help you years down the track.

You spend $50 picking up a round of drinks for everyone you're out with with no expectation of return. As when it is returned it will be returned with a stronger relationship with someone.

You make short term sacrifices with no expectation of return, knowing that you will get a return in the long run. Helping others is the greediest thing you can do, and greed is good. It just gets a bad rap from all the people that don't know how to be properly greedy.

Avoid zero sum scenarios

Often people are engaged in zero sum scenarios, or scenarios that are artificially made to be zero sum.

A good example is working in a department at a corporate. Most corporations are fairly stable with predictable levels of modest growth that comes with the territory of being a large established company. With this comes departments and budgets. You are told you can't get more than a cost of living pay rise because if you get more money, that means someone else gets less as there is a fixed budget.

This is an artificial zero some scenario. The budget is an arbitrary number. You can fix this situation by either of the following (amongst others):

• Find a way to quantify the value you bring to the company and use that to justify the pay rise. Done correctly within a functioning company it is amazing how quickly the budget is no longer an issue
• Find a way to increase the output of your department so that the budget can grow.
• Move to a rapidly growing company in a vital role. Even if you can't quantify your value, the company will be willing to give you more money to stick around and not jeopardise the growth.

Note that all solutions involve increasing the size of the pool so it is no longer zero sum. The first option is giving incentive to remove the artificial limitation on the pool size, the second option is to do something to grow the pool, the third option is to go somewhere with a rapidly growing pool. If the pool is bigger, everyone wins. Go somewhere where the growth mindset prevails and it is no longer a zero sum game.

If you do not have a plan to fix something, you forfeit your right to complain.

This one is pretty simple. Complaining about something is a worthless expense of energy unless you can change it. Put that energy into fixing the problem.

We all know that person that complains by saying "I just don't have any time to do X anymore" or "I spend too much time working". Yet when you ask them how they are going to fix that more often than not regardless of whether there is a plan or not, the situation remains the same the following year. That's fine, but if you don't change the situation you lose the right to complain about it. Energy should be spent on things that you can change, not complaining about it.

The logical extension from this principle is "don't complain."

Try to fix something, don't try to fix everything

This is related to the principle above. Typically the path to fixing anything non-trivial is:

1. Identify the problem
2. Rally support to fix something by commmunicating the problem you have identified
3. Propose a solution
4. Actually do the solution.

If you can continually do this you will be a productive, valuable person. However commonly I see people try to parallelise this. They have their list of problems, and then in trying to fix everything seem to only get to do steps 1-2 for each problem. If all you do is tell people about problems and never get around to fixing anything, your contribution is a net negative. I've seen more people fired for this pattern than anything else. And rightly so.

Momentum is King

This is related to the above point.

Walk before you run. success builds morale which builds success. Structure your plans to have wins along the way, and be ruthless about keeping that momentum going as it is much easier to keep momentum when you have some compared to when you don't.

Opportunity is more valuable than a plan

"The harder I work, the more luck I have"

This could also be "don't fall for the sunk-cost fallacy".

To do our best work, we often need a plan to lead us to where we want to go. Make the plan, work hard, execute. However often opportunity comes up that means throwing away the plan. Just because you have a plan doesn't mean you have to do it. Know when to take the opportunity and throw away the plan.

A good example of this is my decision to join Canva. My plan prior revolved around working for established tech companies under strong leads and getting exposure to all aspects of the software development lifecycle. Previously I had a lot of infrastructure exposure, so I wanted to do straight app development for a while to see how I liked it.

However then the Canva opportunity came. It was doing infrastructure work. Although it is getting there now, at the time it didn't provide the same technical learning environment that I would have had at Google. However the opportunity was too good to pass up. I threw away the plan, and made my new plan be "hold onto the rocketship". So far it was a fantastic choice.

Plans are still very important. It is often that opportunity comes when working hard to fulfil a plan. Just remember to evaluate when to throw out the plan.