For years, we feared automation would replace humans. But as AI reshapes the economy, it’s becoming clear that far from replacing human ingenuity, AI has amplified it. The critical dividing line in our economy is no longer simply education or specialization, but rather agency itself: the raw determination to make things happen without waiting for... See more

Agency is the capacity to act. Gaining agency is gaining the capacity to do something different from the rigid path of events that simply happen to you. Remarkable people typically go off-script early, usually in more than one way. Carnegie becoming a telegraph message boy is one opportunity; asking how to operate the telegraph is another. He was

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At the heart of agency lies a willingness to question defaults. To be agentic, you have to treat “how things are supposed to be done” as just one option among many.

Or, no, that formulation isn’t deep enough. When I think about friends of mine who struggle to be agentic, the problem isn’t precisely that they do the default thing; it’s that they fail... See more