principles.md

# Principles

What guides the work. Inspired by Ray Dalio's *Principles*, I write my own
values down in public — it forces me to be clear, keeps me accountable, and
gives others room to test and challenge what I believe. Below are both: my own
values, and the 5-Step Process that inspired them.

## My values

Some of my core values for life and work, written by Meir Rosenschein.

### Ultra tolerance of "I don't know"

This, like all principles that follow, starts with me. It sometimes feels like
an admission of guilt to say "I don't know" or "can you explain that further?".
I train myself to take that hit and turn it into an edge: being curious and
relentless about understanding the truth, and I make sure there's no penalty for
my team members in admitting the same. That's how we stay aligned. When we
forget to disclose that we don't know, we create parallel versions of reality
where expectations inevitably stop matching up.

### Great work happens in spirals

When we start a project, there's a lot we don't know and even more we don't know
we don't know. That's why trying to perfect things in theory never works. We
have to dive in, do the work, learn, and then circle back. Each time we learn
something new, we get to revisit what we already did with more knowledge and
fresh eyes. Each loop fills in the gaps, and moving through the spiral again and
again is how we actually get to the core of the problem.

### One clear decision at a time

Not everything needs to be decided at once. Some decisions, made too early, are
just guesses and often turn into bad calls. It's better to move forward with
what's clear now, and leave the rest for the right time. The same is true for
product design: user attention (ever declining) should be respected. It's our
job to guide people through their most important decision, one at a time.

### Mercy for the cruel turns into cruelty toward the merciful

This principle is about balance. Pay the right cost at the right time, or it
comes back later, usually landing on people who don't deserve it. In business,
if you avoid charging clearly for value, the cost comes back as a worse product
that punishes users. In management, ignoring poor performance ends up applying
more pressure on the strongest performers. The point stands: if you don't meet
your needs now, at the cost they require, you'll meet them later with more
urgency and more collateral damage.

### Conflict is most destructive when it's unaddressed

Some conflict is insignificant, just the result of a passing mood. But conflict
that resurfaces does not disappear when ignored. It starts fracturing the
foundation of everything it touches until the cost of addressing it feels
overwhelming. The answer is to address conflict as it appears. Often it's
simple: a conflict of truths (I think A, you think B) or a conflict of
understanding (I can't tell if you mean A or B). They don't need to be resolved
right away, but they must be acknowledged. The act of addressing them often
deflates them, and at the very least it builds trust by showing nothing is left
to fester.

### Justice shouldn't favor the rich nor the poor

This value is about bias. We all naturally want to balance the environment and
make sure everyone is cared for. The problem comes when we try to even the
playing field unnaturally, by depriving the advantaged of something fundamental
like justice or security. In business, this shows up when we unfairly alienate
one market just to lift up another. Fairness isn't about tilting the scales back
and forth. It's about keeping them steady.

### Prove ideas fast, especially the bad ones

Most ideas cost more to argue about than to actually test. When the downside is
small, skip the debate and run it — even the ones I suspect are bad. Running it
tells me the real parameters: the actual cost, the actual effort, what breaks,
who it affects. Proving a bad idea fast is a win, not a failure. It kills the
idea cheaply, before it earns any more attention or belief. The bar isn't being
right up front. It's shrinking the distance between having an idea and knowing
what it's made of.

### The name that can be named is not the eternal name

These values are always evolving and adapting. If one of my values feels
inconsistent with the others or with reality, shoot me a message. Let's discuss.

## Ray Dalio's 5-Step Process

The framework that inspired the values above. Paraphrased from Ray Dalio's
*Principles*.

### 1. Goals — have clear goals

- Prioritize: you can have virtually anything you want, but not everything.
- Don't confuse goals with desires; a desire can undermine the goal.
- Decide what you really want by reconciling your goals and your desires.
- Don't mistake the trappings of success for success itself.
- Never rule out a goal because you think it's unattainable.
- Great expectations create great capabilities.

### 2. Problems — identify and don't tolerate them

- View painful problems as potential improvements screaming at you.
- Don't avoid confronting problems because the realities are unpleasant.
- Be specific in identifying your problems.
- Don't mistake a cause of a problem with the real problem.
- Once you identify a problem, don't tolerate it.

### 3. Diagnose — get at the root causes

- Focus on the "what is" before deciding what to do about it.
- Distinguish proximate causes from root causes.
- Knowing what someone (including you) is like tells you what to expect.

### 4. Design — design a plan

- Go back before you go forward; replay how the problem came to be.
- Think of your problem as a set of outcomes produced by a machine.
- There are typically many paths to achieving your goals.
- Write down your plan so everyone can see it and measure progress against it.

### 5. Push — push through to completion

- Great planners who don't execute their plans go nowhere.
- Good work habits are vastly underrated.
- Establish clear metrics to make certain you're following your plan.

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Read the full essay on [Medium](https://medium.com/@meir.rosenschein/my-values-17c0b1732954).