The Pain Button

Ray Dalio, the author of Principles, and the founder of Bridgewater Associates shared an idea of a pain button app. Something that helps you to notice a moment of great pain to analyze it later. You can the link below. Although I’m not using this kind of monitoring app right now, last few months I tried to be more aware of various painful moments. Again, what is painful what is not, is strongly personal. There’s one thing that it’s needed when one notices it.

The most important fact is to notice the pain and be clear about the causes, assumed causes (if it’s not certain) or uknowns related to it. All these can be shared within the environment that the pain is somewhat related t o, discussed and addressed. Of course this assumes a supporting environment, but even without one, noticing, sometimes writing things down to analyze it later, even with yourself, is an amazing tool that one can put in their tool belt.

I cannot encourage you more to think about your pain button, hit it when needed and then analyze it later on.

BTW, I created an app called the Pain Button (which is explained in the appendix of Principles) that is helpful for doing this which I will eventually pass along for these.

— Ray Dalio (@RayDalio) March 19, 2019