Principles: Life and Work

Author: Ray Dalio

I struggled with this book. But, before I tell you about that let me talk about the book. This is Ray Dalio pontificating about his philosophy in life. He postulates the existence of universal laws governing reality and how to deal with it. He is on a quest to educate us about them.

It’s a noble goal, but unfortunately the book reads more like an advertisement for Ray Dalio and all the material he has published over the years. I liked the first part of the book where he talks about how he started his business and some of the personal challenges he has gone through. However, he tries very hard to come across as being very profound and includes some non-sensical equations like the following:

Dreams + Reality + Determination = A Successful Life.

He then qualifies this by saying that the definition of successful life is up to you. He goes so far as to say that your notion of a successful life could be a “couch potato”. I would have loved to see him explain what the variables of “Dreams” and “Determination” stood for in the above equation if  "Successful Life = Couch Potato".

As you can tell, I was not impressed with this book. It also was a drag to read.  Ray Dalio should stick to the investment business and leave writing books to professionals.