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
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
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.”
“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”
—Charlie Munger
Doing a few sets of pushups each day is a simple idea.
Saving at least 10% of your income is a simple idea.
Sending Thank You notes is a simple idea.
...but most people don't take simple ideas seriously.
—Charlie Munger
Doing a few sets of pushups each day is a simple idea.
Saving at least 10% of your income is a simple idea.
Sending Thank You notes is a simple idea.
...but most people don't take simple ideas seriously.
James Clear • Highlights From jamesclear.com
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)
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
... See moreSimon Sarris • School Is Not Enough
A good passage in continuation of the note on collective imaginations.
Responsibility that should be borne by an individual is dissolved amongst a group, who rely on the process of deliberation, passing on the responsibility to the organization.
Excerpt: “Committees are commonly used in our society because they create the illusion of avoiding risk. They are a wonderful device for avoiding responsibility while making the institution seem more rather than less accountable. Modern institutions have overloaded on actual risk while fleeing the appearance of it, especially if you count “failing at core mission” as a risk. Such aversion to the appearance of the unusual can’t be justified on economic grounds. Rather, it is a socially driven aversion.“
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.
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.”