I’ve had Principles: Life and Work on my virtual shelf for quite a while. It’s curious to me how we hold on to books for years before reading them. It’s like the reading gods know when we need a specific book and we magically have it.

Principles is one of those books.

Until a few years ago, I’d never heard of Ray Dalio or his company Bridgewater. Now, I know Bridgewater is a wildly successful company financially as well as internally as a team. Dalio has spent time with the world’s foremost leaders on business and culture, including the Dalai Lama. In Principles, he shares the many hard rules he maintains to get the best out of himself and others.

After starting a new job at a company with fewer than thirty employees, I’ve been reading more and more about building great companies and cultures. Principles fits the bill. While I don’t agree with everything Dalio believes or practices, I understand how he developed these principles and how they work well in his industry. I also appreciate Dalio’s belief in radical transparency. He practices this in his book. He doesn’t tell you a pithy principle and share a cutesy anecdote. He talks about the good, bad, and ugly of starting, scaling, and maintaining a company.

This book is worth the read, especially if you work in an office-type job. There are dozens of helpful tips you can pick up and even more nuggets of wisdom you can adapt for your own book of principles.

Here are three of my favorite quotes from this book:

Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that gets you what you want out of life. They can be applied again and again in similar situations to help you achieve your goals.

And

While it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to use others’ principles, adopting principles without giving them much thought can expose you to the risk of acting in ways inconsistent with your goals and your nature.

Finally

If you can think for yourself while being open-minded in a clearheaded way to find out what is best for you to do, and if you can summon up the courage to do it, you will make the most of your life.

Happy Reading!