Estimated reading time: 3 mins
As mentioned in my summary of Principles: Life and Work, Ray Dalio released a Principles in Action app for both Apple and Android. I usually check out the “bonus material” authors link to, so I gave it a quick spin—here’s my review of the app.
The app is free and, surprisingly, not cash-grabby at all. It even allows you to read the Principles book for free!
My favourite section in the app was Coach, which I discuss below. The other parts are just links to Dalio’s book, videos, and mini-exercises (“Cases”) which I didn’t find all that useful. However, I could be biased because I dislike watching videos or reading articles on my phone.
There’s also a personalised assessment/personality test, which you can take online as well. I didn’t bother—after the first 4 questions, I was only 2% of the way through and gave up.
Coach
The Coach section of the app lets you browse or search for common situations and find the principles relevant to that situation.
For example, the situation “How do I hold people accountable effectively?” lists the following principles:
- Recognize that tough love is both the hardest and most important type of love to give (because it is so rarely welcomed).
- Distinguish between a failure in which someone broke their “contract” and a failure in which there was no contract to begin with.
- Hold yourself and your people accountable and appreciate them for holding you accountable.
- Don’t lower the bar.
- Evaluate accurately, not kindly.
- Force yourself and the people who work for you to do difficult things.
Each principle comes with a brief explanation and a link to the relevant part of the book. You can also favourite situations to refer back to later.
Some situations like the one above can be applied in virtually any organisation. Others, however, may be less relevant if your organisation hasn’t already bought into an idea-meritocracy and Dalio’s Work Principles. For example, 3 of the 5 principles listed for “I need to make a decision but others disagree” relate to believability-weighting. If your organisation isn’t already set up to do believability-weighted voting, these principles could be hard to apply.
Overall assessment
I found the Principles in Action app to be pretty smooth and easy-to-use. While I personally don’t plan to keep using it, I could see its value to a new manager or startup founder.
In my opinion, the app is better than the book and far more practical. The book is not very well-written or structured, which makes it hard to apply to any particular situation.
To be honest, I kept looking for a catch. Usually business books and apps try to upsell you on all kinds of crap. While there are Principles-branded coaches and solutions and services for businesses, they aren’t even advertised on the app. So my cynical self is still a little confused as to why Dalio bothered to develop this. Maybe, like the book, it was originally intended to be used internally in Bridgewater, and he figured he might as well release it publicly once it was developed.
Have you tried out the app? Let me know what you thought of it in the comments below!
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