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
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.
Jeff Giesea • 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
As the old institutions continue to crumble, the most independent minds and high-agency private networks will continue to fill the vacuum.
And We're Back... Welcome to Other Life 2024
I think that talking about agency and introspection separately is misguided. People who emphasize how to get things done, and move faster, and reach higher levels of mastery—agency without introspection—tend to get pulled into fierce yet boring status competitions. People who emphasize introspection and emotions but without a problem solving... See more
Spot on thought via Henrik Karlsson
Because I don't want to be a monk. I don't want to go live in a cabin. I'm not gonna swear off Netflix or podcasts or whatever. I like this stuff. It's just a problem of excess and moderation, and I'm trying to figure out how to live my life in a way that is more deliberate, and less passive. I don’t want to just follow compulsive desire, which is... See more
J.E. Petersen • Uncomfortable on Purpose
On the other side of creative aliveness, there is flatness. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, about what happens when our worlds go flat. The dynamism we lose, the emotional urges we suppress, the original impulses we become too afraid to nurture.
On the running path recently, a song came on. It was by Eminem. His music is not my choice for... See more
On the running path recently, a song came on. It was by Eminem. His music is not my choice for... See more
Leandra Medine Cohen • Notes from the running path
Leandra on anti-flatness
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,
