Agency

if i'd had more agency when I was younger,

I would have acted on some truly terrible decisions that I may never have recovered from

...which makes me suspicious of agency as the latest all-good panacea

The kind of agency that comes from knowing how to win friends and get things done is important and should be learned. But without aligning it with wisdom—and without fellow travelers on the path toward less foolishness—greater foolishness often follows.

The most successful entrepreneurs and business people aren’t necessarily the smartest. But the managerial tracks that have fueled the upper-middle class have been fed by a credentialed cognitive elite. I expect those priorities to shift toward agency, adaptability, and demonstrated value creation.

Being agentic is a gritty journey of trial and error, non-glamorous, and does not result in gold stars. The last thing one needs to be agentic is to appear right in contexts where being right cannot be accurately assessed. One needs to risk being wrong, which also means appearing wrong—a prospect that often translates to appearing stupid, one of... See more

What would your life look like if you actually had no agency around each problem you are currently facing. Describe the details of a zero agency life.

You gotta be understanding who you are and where you're at in life

right now. You absolutely have to be figuring out how you can

increase your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behaviors

as well as your faith in your ability to handle a wide range of

tasks and situations.

Agencymaxxing happens through

doing things. You

can think all you want and... See more