Agency
Everything in our world is there because someone decided it needed to exist. We all have things we know need to exist. What stops us from making them exist?
Agency
2020 Letter to Shareholders
aboutamazon.com
To 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
In my experience, the way you end up doing good in the world has very little to do with how good your initial plan was.
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
One of the biggest sources of discontent is a mental motion that many do continually:
Planning what decision you will make ahead of when the time comes to make the decision.
Lulietwitter.comAnalysis paralysis takes different forms. Delaying action or preempting action are means of avoiding action.
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"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare."
–Muhammad Ali
Big companies exert low levels of stress. But that stress is often low agency, so you often feel miserable in face of problems.
Startups exert high levels of stress. But that stress is often high agency, so you often feel energized in the face of problems.
Terrence Rohanx.com