Make your passion and your work one and the same and do it with people you want to be with.

Work is either 1) a job you do to earn the money to pay for the life you want to have or 2) what you do to achieve your mission, or some mix of the two. I urge you to make it as much 2) as possible, recognizing the value of 1). If you do that, most everything will go better than if you don’t.

Work Principles is written for those for whom work is primarily the game that you play to follow your passion and achieve your mission.

We applied these ways of operating to the businesses of investing and managing. In the process of investing I developed a practical understanding of what makes businesses and economies succeed, and in the process of managing my company I had to develop a practical understanding of how to manage businesses well. And I liked that my understanding of these subjects could be objectively measured via our investment performance as well as our business performance.

Because Principles is an evolving document, with new principles being added and old ones getting refined all the time, they will be changed. You will be able to find them in my forthcoming Principles app, which you can learn about at www.principles.com.

TO GET THE CULTURE RIGHT . . .

You have to work in a culture that suits you. That’s fundamental to your happiness and your effectiveness. You also must work in a culture that is effective in producing great outcomes, because if you don’t, you won’t get the psychic and material rewards that keep you motivated. In this section on culture I will share my thoughts on how to match your culture to your needs, and I will explain the type of culture that I wanted and that has worked so well for me: an idea meritocracy.
