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
Most people understand that a forest "doesn't exist" in the sense that humans made up that word (the trees exist in a concrete way that the "forest" does not. Same with a "lake" vs water etc)
It just occurred to me that "a person" is more like a forest than a tree
Meta on self and agency
My most profound moment in college was when a professor mentioned that we were in school not to learn concepts, but to learn how to think critically. It was a major unblocker for me.
Prior to that moment, I'd been prioritizing getting good grades in my classes. It was the most important thing at the time. The clearest object I had in front of me.
Now
fast forward a year from now. your life is the best it's ever been, entirely as a result of your own choices.
what choices did you make now and in the coming months that created that reality for you?
Profound. I'll have to return to this one.
It strikes me a higher-level decomposition of that Naval thread.
1/ It's very interesting and useful I think to apply the MVP model of product development to personal development.
Perpetual motion starts with motion
Shorten your feedback loops
Iterate faster
Increase clockspeed (circle back faster)
Refusing to choose is a choice.
Excerpt: “The upsetting implication, and why I sometimes avoid recognizing my own agency, is that if I have a choice, then what I’m doing is actually what I chose to be doing. This can be kind of upsetting for one’s self-image.”
Sam Altman: "A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are.
People have an enormous capacity to make things happen. A combination of self-doubt,… Show more
The objective severity of our histories may be of little importance when compared to the subjective hold they appear to have on us.
To paraphrase physician and author Gabor Maté, we are not what happened to us but what happened inside of us as a result of what happened to us.
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.