Agency
2020 Letter to Shareholders
aboutamazon.comTo go with the flow is to seek equilibrium.
Excerpt from a remarkable final shareholder letter:
“Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at. Left to itself – and that is what it is when it dies – the body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with its environment. If you measure some quantity such as the temperature, the acidity, the water content or the electrical potential in a living body, you will typically find that it is markedly different from the corresponding measure in the surroundings. Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than our surroundings, and in cold climates they have to work hard to maintain the differential. When we die the work stops, the temperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings.”
Read this a long while ago. I should probably come back to it. Most high-agency people start exhibiting it at a young age. Depending on where you are in life, it can feel like you’re allowing life to happen to you. Is the way to cure that finding examples of agency in the past to convince yourself you’re allowed to do things, or maybe just do it? Seems obvious when it is written down ha
Nate Soares • Dive in
"I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen, but as the years wasted on, nothing ever did unless I caused it.”
—Charles Bukowski
Analysis paralysis takes different forms. Delaying action or preempting action are means of avoiding action.
.png)