How to be More Agentic

radical agency is about finding real edges: things you are willing to do that others aren’t, often because they’re annoying or unpleasant. These don’t always surface in awareness to the point one is actually choosing -- often they live in a cloud of aversion that strategically obscures the tradeoff.

If you aren’t trying to get real feedback from people who know you, you’re cooking without tasting.

I sent an email recently that I wouldn’t have dared try a few years ago, something along the lines of “I’m planning to start an organization similar to yours; would you consider letting me run yours instead?” The response? Crickets. Maybe that person thinks I overstepped. But it doesn’t matter, because a similar pitch delivered to someone else put ... See more

My rule is never to take instructions on how hard I should work from someone who hasn’t burned out before. Very few people take this seriously enough.

What I discovered by casting a wide net was that I have very little ability to predict how useful a call will be in advance. Relevance is easier to predict, but it’s not a very good proxy for usefulness, which is a product of lots of other things including the other person’s enthusiasm and the breadth of their interests. To some extent, the more co... See more