每日原则：将决策过程系统化

你自己的原则是否系统化或计算机化是次要的 ，最重要的是你要建立自己的原则，最好能把它们写下来，尤其是当你和别人一起共事的时候。

这样的处事方式和原则为我带来了收益，而不是我本身。它们把我从一个纽约长岛普通中产阶级家庭的孩子变成了一名以常规标准来看很成功的人，比如说把在自己的两居室公寓里创建的公司发展成为位列美国《财富》杂志中最重要的私营公司榜单的第五位、成为《福布斯》杂志公布的世界上最富有的100人之一、并被《时代周刊》评为世界上最有影响力的100人之一。它们还把我带到了一个有利的位置，让我看到了与想象中完全不同的成功和生活，并且给了我有意义的工作和有意义的人际关系，它们的价值于我而言更胜于传统意义上的成功。它们带给我和桥水的远远超乎我的想象。

I discovered I could do that by expressing my decision-making criteria in the form of algorithms that I could embed into our computers. By running both decision-making systems--i.e., mine in my head and mine in the computer--next to each other, I learned the computer could make better decisions than me because it could process vastly more information than I could, and it could do it faster and unemotionally. Doing that allowed me and the people I worked with to compound our understanding over time and improve the quality of our collective decision making. I discovered that such decision-making systems--especially when believability weighted--are incredibly powerful and will soon profoundly change how people around the world make all kinds of decisions. Our principle-driven approach to decision making has not only improved our economic, investment, and management decisions, it has helped us make better decisions in every aspect of our lives. 

Whether or not your own principles are systemized/computerized is of secondary importance. The most important thing is that you develop your own principles and ideally write them down, especially if you are working with others.

It was that approach and the principles it yielded, and not me, that took me from being an ordinary middle-class kid from Long Island to being successful by a number of conventional measures--like starting a company out of my two-bedroom apartment and building it into the fifth most important private company in the U.S. (according to Fortune), becoming one of the hundred richest people in the world (according to Forbes), and being considered one of the hundred most influential (according to Time). They led me to a perch from which I got to see success and life very differently than I had imagined, and they gave me the meaningful work and meaningful relationships I value even more than my conventional successes. They gave me and Bridgewater far more than I ever dreamed of.