I got some great questions from some recent Principle of the Day posts about setting and going after goals, and the struggles that ensue. In my life, I determined my path by going after what I was drawn to, experienced it, and learned, which broadened my perspective and therefore, what I was naturally drawn to evolved. I focused and continue to focus on rapid learning/evolving which quickly broadens my experiences and capabilities so my life is always an exciting adventure. That all happens in the way I described in the 5-step process. There are always too many exciting avenues to pursue so 1) you have to pick one or a few great goals. In going after them, you will encounter problems and failures which are your learning opportunities, so you must 2) identify and not tolerate your problems, then 3) diagnose them to get at their root causes, 4) design paths around those root causes, and 5) execute those designs which will move you forward to more discoveries by doing this five-step process over and over again. The key is to do it well and to do it fast. To do it well, do it with the radical open-mindedness to take in the best thinking of others. If you do that, you will naturally get better at it so you will do it faster and faster which will lead to the rapid learning and evolving.
[dalio]
Q2 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
And believe me, I know that finding your best possible path is hard. But it’s there, and it’s actually much harder in the long run to not find it than to find it, and the best way to find it is with radical open-mindedness. I encourage everyone to read over the sections on radical open-mindedness in Principles so that you get what I mean by open-mindedness so that you get that down. When you learn to see things through the eyes of others so that they are all looking to identify the best paths, you will find them much more quickly than if you don’t have that radical open-mindedness. In the process of finding your best possible path and setting audacious goals, there will be struggles! But you have to learn to love the struggle. As I see it, it works as follows. When you are imagining what you can achieve, you are only taking into consideration what you know in that moment. But when you try to discover what you don’t know, you learn a lot of different ways of getting at your goal which you never imagined. That’s why you can achieve much more than you imagined. When you achieve a lot more than you imagined, you will set even higher goals. Why will you set these higher goals? It is not because you need more. It is because you love setting high goals and achieving them. In other words, you will love the struggle and the achievements of knowing how to struggle well. And you should be drawn to do what’s hard because it gives you strength as well as it gets you more of what you want. What’s really hard is being weak.
Article by Ray Dalio, Facebook
