Building Your Own Principles

On Monday a book arrived that I ordered 109 days ago. To say I was super excited to start reading it would have been an understatement, for I’d wanted the book a long time before that but didn’t want to pay the extortionate amount of money I would have had to for the original. The book is Poor Charlie’s Almanack.

Charlie passed away late last year which is probably why there was a 4 month delay in getting the book. People simply had to get a copy and read what this wise old man had to say. I’d heard and read that this book is life-changing from numerous different people across various disciplines so I was slightly suspicious and afraid it might not live up to its expectations. Well, I’m a third of the way in and I had to say to myself I need to slow down because I want to savour this. Then I frantically thought hold on I’ll just read it back to back. It is though, everything I thought and hoped it would be and I will be doing a complete review of this special book in the next couple of months.

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."

- Francis Bacon

Whilst reading Poor Charlie’s Almanack something that has seemingly been spoken about extensively in every book I seem to pick up this year is this idea, as Charlie called them, of a ‘latticework of mental models’. You could also say Principles like Ray Dalio advocates. Or virtues as Seneca espouses. Nassim Taleb calls his version of this Anti-fragile. I have my version from my time in the Royal Marines, the Commando Ethos, Spirit and Mindset.

Principles, a latticework of mental models, virtues, and ethos are all the same thing just articulated differently. What they all are though is a kind of moral compass. I suppose you could have a twisted moral compass but generally virtues like courage or an ethos like integrity are typically there for the good of you and others. They are there because these are supposedly things that you will not bend on (most of the time, we’re human after all) and can take the ‘decision’ out of decision-making.

Charlie says in his book that he has around 80/100 models that he can turn to in an instant and use quickly to understand something and make decisions. The Stoics have 4 virtues; Courage, wisdom, justice and temperance to guide them and others. Ray Dalio has Principles for life, work and investing that again are too long for this post but they hang on integrity, strong work ethics and radical transparency. The Royal Marines's ethos is integrity, excellence, self-disciple and humility. The Commando spirit of courage, determination, unselfishness and cheerfulness. Our mindset of “Be the first to understand, the first to adapt and the first to overcome” has permanently left a mark on every atom in my body.

Whatever you call them and whatever they are they have to be important to you. Take humility and cheerfulness for example. They sound ok and everybody hopes to be both but are they things on which to hang your moral hat? Well I think they are for when you’re in the Marines life can be tough and it can be dark. Very dark. Being cheerful in the face of adversity is like a superpower. Having humility allows you to be humbled and oh how often we were!

Courage is a tough one. We all want to be courageous but that often opens us up to something that may hurt us. Physically or mentally. Things that nobody wants to happen to them but something people all wish to be.

Charlie’s latticework was built upon many different disciplines. He too valued integrity and humility (knowing that there’s a lot he didn’t know) but his models were built on physics, engineering, mathematics, biology, chemistry and psychology. He understood before it was widely publicised by the late Daniel Kahneman that people behaved and acted in typically easy-to-follow and predictable ways. Einstein discovered that the world works and is governed by laws and averages. By knowing these things you give yourself an edge. As Ray Dalio would say, scenarios that crop up by surprise to most people are just “another one of them” to him. Knowing the different types of ‘them’ though is a skill that has to be earned.

I say this all the time but can’t say it enough. This is why books are amazing.

"There is no better teacher than history in determining the future. There are answers worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book."

- Poor Charlie’s Almanack

These values, principles, et al can be there as your moral compass or they can be there to help you make better decisions. I argue that they can do both across the full spectrum of our lives.

If you can’t think of what your virtues are or what your ethics or values are I can be certain that you have them. You might ask if you’re somebody who has integrity. Well, just look at the average of your decisions, especially when nobody is looking. How do you behave? Do you only look out for yourself or do you do what’s required especially when no one is there exactly because you know that that is the easiest time not to?

You don’t have courage you say? Well not everybody will willing to run into a house fire or go into battle but courage, for the most part, isn’t the big thing, it’s many many small things. It’s the courage to try and make something of yourself or your family day in and day out. It’s daring to try and be somebody dictated by you, not society. It’s courageous to say no because saying no in our world means rebellion. It raises eyebrows. It’s rude and confrontational so we say yes to far more than we should because people who say no get shunned and ostracised. But saying no to something that can harm you in any way and saying yes to something you wish or desire for yourself isn’t wrong. It’s morally the only thing you should be doing. Yes, doing things for other people is what builds community, respect and trust. But never at the expense of yourself.

Think, read, borrow and refine whatever it is you want to call it. Make these frameworks your foundation on which to build. You may only wish to build a modestly small house on your foundation or you may wish to build a skyscraper. The choice is yours.

Think for yourself to decide 1) what you want, 2) what is true, and 3) what you should do to achieve #1 in light of #2

- Ray Dalio - Principles

*Photo by Анна Рыжкова: