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
5 Reasons People Keep Taking Advantage Of You
taylorpearson.me
In the other direction, I think there are skills and dispositions which increase your agency in general. Practical wisdom, the skill of knowing that to do, is generally agency-increasing because it makes it easier to find paths to act on your preferences, so gets you used to acting in general.
David R. MacIver • Learning to exercise agency
Reminder that a sense of agency means feeling like you have control over your actions and their consequences . I think people tend to forget that second part; owning your mistakes and their consequences is extremely difficult, which might be a motivating factor for some people to adopt victim complexes. (A victim complex is learned!)
sundus • agency: it's only human
you are a self-modifying machine, a particle with partial control over its own future, and it pays to know what all the buttons do. I’ve heard many people describe to me what sound like levers in their own souls, but I know very few people who realize that they can pull on them deliberately, if they want to.
Duncan Sabien • The Levers of the Soul
The opposite to reflexive agency is prompted agency - agency which only becomes available given some prompt to action. “That does seem like a problem. Have you tried solving it?” is my only-half-joking prompt I use with people: It’s something that highlights the failure of agency, in a way that makes people aware that action is an option available
... See moreDavid R. MacIver • Learning to exercise agency
But there is tremendous power in defining ideals, even if they ultimately remain out of reach. Considering all that is at stake, we have to at least try.
The first step towards being “high agency” is always the same. You cannot take effective action towards bending the world to your desire until you know, in detail, what it is that you desire.
sari and
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 tried to make it work?
At @l... See more
So, if you want to increase your agency: Have conversations with others, or do journaling, about what you can do to improve your circumstances, and then act on the conclusions from that.