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When entering this second phase of life, you are almost certainly making the mistake of thinking you know more than you actually know—especially if you got good grades in school. You were taught that success is a matter of learning what you were taught and not making mistakes. That probably made you a bit arrogant, like I was when I graduated. But it is living life and encountering your realities that will truly teach you. The question is, will you learn? 

You can watch the full speech at the link in my bio. #principles

Understanding, accepting, and working with reality is both practical and beautiful. I have become so much of a hyperrealist that I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of all realities, even harsh ones, and have come to despise impractical idealism.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe in making dreams happen. To me, there’s nothing better in life than doing that. The pursuit of dreams is what gives life its flavor. My point is that people who create great things aren’t idle dreamers: They are totally grounded in reality. Being hyperrealistic will help you choose your dreams wisely and then achieve them.

By interacting with my digital twin, you can evaluate your own decision-making processes and evolve your approach in real-time. The faster you evolve, the faster your results will follow. Click the link below/in my bio to start our comversation now. #principleoftheday

One of my favorite principles, learned through experience, is that pain plus reflection equals progress. I developed a habit of viewing pain as a signal of a problem. If you treat that problem as a puzzle to solve, it ultimately yields a gem in the form of a great principle. I learned to value painful experiences because they became my best learning experiences and led to the most significant advances. Learning from direct encounters with reality is a much better way to succeed in life than simply remembering what others try to teach.

You can watch the full speech at the link in my bio. #principles

Values are the deep-seated beliefs that motivate behaviors and determine people’s compatibilities with each other. People will fight for their values, and they are likely to fight with people who don’t share them. Abilities are ways of thinking and behaving. Some people are great learners and fast processors; others possess the ability to see things at a higher level. Some focus more on the particulars; still others think creatively or logically or with supreme organization. Skills are learned tools, such as being able to speak a foreign language or write computer code. While values and abilities are unlikely to change much, most skills can be acquired in a limited amount of time (e.g., software proficiency can be learned) and often change in worth (today’s most in-demand programming language is likely to be obsolete in a few years).

It is important for you to know what mix of qualities is important to fit each role and, more broadly, what values and abilities are required in people with whom you can have successful relationships. In picking people for long-term relationships, values are most important, abilities come next, and skills are the least important. Yet most people make the mistake of choosing skills and abilities first and overlooking values. We value people most who have what I call the three C’s: character, common sense, and creativity.

If your people are bound by a sense of community and mission and they are capable, you will have an extraordinary organization. Some people will value the mission and community and others won’t. #principleoftheday

Most attributes are a double-edged sword that bring potential benefits and potential harm. The more extreme the attribute, the more extreme the potential good or bad outcomes it is likely to produce. For example, a highly creative, goal-oriented person good at imagining new ideas might undervalue the minutiae of daily life, which is also important; he might be so driven in his pursuit of long-term goals that he might have disdain for people who focus on the details of daily life. Similarly, a task-oriented person who is great with details might undervalue creativity—and worse still, may squelch it in the interests of efficiency. These two people might make a great team, but are likely to have trouble taking advantage of the ways they’re complementary, because the ways their minds work make it difficult for them to see the value of each other’s ways of thinking.

Having expectations for people (including yourself) without knowing what they are like is a sure way to get in trouble. I learned this the hard way, through years of frustrating conversations and the pain of expecting things from people who were constitutionally incapable of delivering them. I’m sure that I caused them plenty of pain too. #principleoftheday

I believe success is a matter of having meaningful work and meaningful relationships—work and relationships that you are thrilled by. If you can make your work and your passion one and the same, and you can do it with people who you care about and care about you, you will have a happy, successful life.

You can watch the full speech at the link in my bio. #principles

Almost every group that agrees on the big things ends up fighting about less important things and becoming enemies even though they should be bound by the big things. This phenomenon is called the narcissism of small differences. Don’t let this narcissism of small differences happen to you. Understand that nobody and nothing is perfect and that you are lucky to have by-andlarge excellent relationships. See the big picture. #principleoftheday

My first breakthrough in understanding how people think differently occurred when I was a young father and had my kids tested by Dr. Sue Quinlan. I found the results remarkable, because she not only confirmed my own observations of the ways that their minds were working at the time but also predicted how they would develop in the future. I turned to her and others years later when I was trying to figure out the different thinking styles of my employees and colleagues. #principleoftheday

The most important thing you can do is understand that hiring is a high risk gamble that needs to be approached deliberately. A lot of time, effort, and resources go into hiring and developing new employees before it’s clear whether or not they are good fits. Months or even years and countless dollars can be wasted in training and retraining. (For example, every person you hire requires you to hire others to support them. I call this the “1.6 effect.”)

Some of those costs are intangible, including loss of morale and a gradual diminishment of standards as people who aren’t excellent in their roles bump into each other; other costs from bad outcomes can be measured all too easily in dollars and cents. So whenever you think you are ready to make someone an offer, think one last time about the important things that might go wrong and what else you can do to better assess those risks and raise your probability of being right.
#principleoftheday

If you’re interested in learning about my most important investment and economic principles, I designed a course to help you do just that.

It’s called the Dalio Market Principles Online program — a 30-hour curriculum I designed, in partnership with @wmisingapore (WMI).

You’ll learn about the forces that drive markets and asset returns, economic and currency cycles, paradigm shifts, and more. Better yet, you’ll get to test your own thinking in our portfolio simulator so you can learn from your mistakes and be better prepared for the future.

I hope you’ll check it out at the link in my bio, if you’re interested.

There are few things that are more important for the health of the world than the health of U.S.-China relations and the health of our oceans. For over 40 years, I have cared deeply about both, and I was thrilled that OceanX was able to bring together American and Chinese students and early-career scientists on a goodwill mission last month. Watch here to see a little bit of what it was like and the meaningful relationships that came out of it.

While there’s a lot being written about the Supreme Court decisions on tariffs, I wanted to take a moment to step back and clearly lay out my thoughts on them.

Many people think of tariffs as purely disruptive, but throughout history, they’ve been a primary source of government revenue.

In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have tariffs — each country would make and trade the things they are capable of producing efficiently. But as the world becomes increasingly fragmented, we have to look beyond pure economic efficiency and consider the necessity of self-sufficiency.

For that reason, tariffs are anything but simple. To understand who truly benefits and who pays the price, you have to look at the full system.