Agency

Marc Andreessen, who wrote: “The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”

Agency and self-efficacy are deeply intertwined, like the will to act (agency) and the belief that you can succeed (self-efficacy). They reinforce each other in a feedback loop, but they aren’t the same thing.

How They Influence Each Other

1. Self-Efficacy Fuels Agency
   
   
   • If you believe you can accomplish something, you're more likely to take action .
   
   
   • Exa

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Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those val-ues; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets,... See more

The simple individualistic humanist frame treats the person as the seat of agency, the atomic unit of moral responsibility and choice-making.

I want you to see the limits of this model. Agency exists at micro- and macro-scales, the “person” is just one step on the ladder.

Agency is the skill that built the world around you, an all-purpose life intensifier that lets you make your corner of it more like what you want it to be, whether that’s professional, relational, aesthetic, whatever. Build a better mousetrap. Have an enviable marriage. Start a country. No one is born with it, everyone can learn it, and it’s never... See more

When you're agencymaxxing, others become more interested in helping

you because you're a good investment. You, the agencymaxxer, apply a

multiplier to others' help so that their help goes further than if

they applied that help to someone who wastes it by not helping

themself. People like when their help makes a meaningful difference

and they don't like... See more