David Senra

Interestingly, I've never met Brett Victor.

If he's listening, I'd love to meet him.

I owe him an enormous debt of gratitude for one of my bigger career successes, which was I took his principle, not my own, but his principle of instant feedback and applied it as the primary design principle to software that I built in my last business, which worked really well.

The software itself worked really well.

The business grew a lot because of the software and the software worked well because of his principle.

of instant feedback on choices being made by the user, showing up in this case in a visual that described their portfolio.

Before I had my own principle, I stole his principle to great effect, which just goes to show the power of a great principle.

But I couldn't have articulated it for a really long time, and I can't explain to you why that's the case.

I don't know.

I don't know if it was Alan Watts that said this.

He had such a way with words that maybe it was him.

It might've been Joseph Campbell, but something to the effect of we're not searching for the meaning of life, but for the feeling of being alive.

And I think that's correct.

And I think a great, if you play red light, green light with principle, as you search for your principle, I think you could do a lot worse than knowing you're on the right path.

If the thing makes you feel more alive, like if you go in the direction of

People know what it's like to feel alive.

They can call to mind these moments in their lives where they felt the most present and alive.

Using those as a signpost to what your principle might be or what you should be doing, I think is a really great thing.

That's certainly how I remember reading that line 15 years ago as well.

and then starting to chase the feeling of being alive.