使用原则既能简化也能改善你的决策。尽管读到现在你也许觉得这显而易见，但值得反复重申的是，要明白几乎所有“眼前的情况”都是“类似情境的再现”，要识别“类似情境”是什么，然后应用经深思熟虑得出的原则来应对。通过这么做，你必须做出的决策的数量将大大减少（我估计约减少为十万分之一），你的决策质量将大大提升。把这做好的诀窍是：
（1）让你的思维慢下来，以注意到你正在引用的决策标准。
（2）把这个标准作为一项原则写下来。
（3）当结果出现时，评估结果，思考标准，并在下一个“类似情境”出现之前改进标准。
识别每个“类似情境”的类别，就像识别一种动物所属的物种一样。识别每一件事，然后选择对其适用的原则，会变得像在玩游戏一样，所以这样做既是很有用的，也是很有趣的，当然也可能具有挑战性。许多我所说的“眼前的情况”都具有混合性质。当眼前的情况里包含多个“类似情境的再现”时，你必须权衡不同的原则，运用“头脑蓝图”来思考对遇到的不同类型情况如何处理。为了帮助人们这么做，我创制了一个称为“教练”的工具，我将会在以后分享出来。
你可以用自己的原则，也可以用别人的，只需要把能发现的最好的原则用好。如果你养成了这样的思维习惯，你将成为一个卓越的有原则的思考者。
Using principles is a way of both simplifying and improving your decision making. While it might seem obvious to you by now, it’s worth repeating that realizing that almost all “cases at hand” are just “another one of those,” identifying which “one of those” it is, and then applying well-thought-out principles for dealing with it. This will allow you to massively reduce the number of decisions you have to make (I estimate by a factor of something like 100,000) and will lead you to make much better ones. The key to doing this well is to:
1. Slow down your thinking so you can note the criteria you are using to make your decision.
2. Write the criteria down as a principle.
3. Think about those criteria when you have an outcome to assess, and refine them before the next “one of those” comes along.
Identifying which “one of those” each thing is is like identifying which species an animal is. Doing that for each thing and then matching it up with the appropriate principles will become like playing a game, so it will be fun as well as helpful. Of course it can also be challenging. Many “cases at hand,” as I call them, are hybrids. When a case at hand contains a few “another ones of those,” one must weigh different principles against each other, using mental maps of how the different types of things I encounter should be handled. To help people do that, I created a tool called a Coach, which I’ll be sharing soon.
You can use your own principles, or you can use others’; you just want to use the best ones possible well. If you think that way constantly, you will become an excellent principled thinker.
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《每日原则》为瑞·达利欧(Ray Dalio) 原创，
《原则》团队翻译，欢迎分享，转载请注明出处。
