Typical of how most pivotal moments are introduced in my life, I was on The Twitter®. I came across a tweet describing a video on life, purpose, self-awareness, etc… I looked to my right, to my left and then exclaimed “I’m game!” and clicked the link to the video (which is embeded below if you’d like to watch it).
I was so glad I did too. Although the video has a very slow start, it lays a great foundation for the big take-aways at the end. In the talk, Bret Victor talks about living your life based on a principle–your personal principle which governs your decisions. Although the concept is simple, the implications are profound–if you can discover your principle.
Bret does a good job of showing his principles, which is “creators need to immediately see direct change”. He also provides the principles of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (“women’s suffrage”), Larry Tesler (“no modes”) and a few more. Towards the end of his talk, Bret provides a simple way to test your principle using a yes/no question format.
Discovering one’s principle has got to take some serious soul-searching. Unfortunately, it’s not something that is given to you by your parents or something that is explicitly laid before you when you get your driver’s license or when you turn 21. For me, I had to look into my repeated patterns of decision making. I tried to look at how I spend the majority of my free time and my procrastination time. I had to look for common themes and for common passion boosters.
After two weeks of trying to define my guiding principle, I believe I have found it. Now, I’m all for tweaking and fine-tuning it, but the smile I get when I think of what I currently have, makes me feel like I’m on the right path. The beauty of it is now I can guide my decisions off of my principle, and quickly determine whether I should or shouldn’t embark on an endeavor.
Alright, alright. Without further ado, I believe my guiding principle is to: amplify great ideas effectively
That’s it.
Like I said, it makes me smile and the vision I get from thinking about it fits snuggly around some of the major events that have happened in my life. Agreeably “amplifying great ideas effectively” is a bit too broad/vague, and for that, I gladly will partake in adjustments as they become apparent.
Now, I could get into super detail of why I think this is my guiding principle, but I’ll save that for when we talk in person, or maybe a different time when I feel like writing it down.
For now, I’m going to run with it. 🙂
What do you do in your procrastination time? What are re-occurring decisions and themes? What’s your guiding principle?