I’m currently reading Principles from Ray Dalio. It’s amazing. Dalio is an American billionaire investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. Dalio is the founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds.
In principles Dalio describes ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life.
I could write a post about basically every principle of his book, but some strike me just a bit more than others.
One that’s really insightful is the principle of “higher level thinking”. Higher level thinking is the idea of having the ability to rise above your own and others’ thinking. It gives you the ability to study and influence the cause effect relationships at play in your life and use them to get the outcomes you want.
Dalio describes to types of roles you have in your life. The role as designer and the role as worker. Being able to look beyond your role as worker and actively and objectively take control and design your life to get to the outcomes you want is a fundamental skill.
It’s easy to get stuck in worker mode. But stepping back once in a while and decide on what you need to do (design) to get where you want is both fruitfull as necessary.