Agency
Ideas around agency, aka the sense of control that you feel in your life + your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior
unoptimal and
Agency
Great thing about starting your own company that you can design the way you want it.
Too many founders or companies fall in this trap following established playbooks or bring processes from other places. People also say that “it doesn’t work” or “it won’t scale”, which my response is well have you tried it? Have you... See more
Karri Saarinenx.com
I’ve come to believe that agency — the ability to start, decide, act, adapt, and follow through — is rising in importance as AI continues to spread. We’re used to seeing raw intelligence as the ultimate advantage, but something is shifting. Intelligence is now everywhere. It’s on tap. It’s no longer scarce. The rare thing now is the ability and... See more
Agency is the new superpower
So this is what I’ll call a “failure of agency” - a case where there is a clear preference, and a clear ability to act on that preference, but no action occurs (and possibly the idea that you could act never even occurs to you).
David R. MacIver • Learning to exercise agency
It’s not that entrepreneurs are natural rule-breakers. Rather … they want self-direction. They aren’t going to take the world at face value. They have to figure it out for themselves.
Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.... See more
David Foster Wallace,
Nix 🕊 • carry yourself lightly
How to spot high agency people:
1. Weird teenage hobbies - Teenage years are the hardest time to go against social pressures. If they can go against the crowd as a teenager, they can go against the crowd as an adult.
2. Energy distortion field - If you meet with them when… Show more
“The capacity for growth depends on one’s ability to internalize and to take personal responsibility. If we forever see our life as a problem caused by others, a problem to be "solved," then no change will occur.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife