First, be clear about your intentions. For myself, I want to maximize learning and improving myself, and minimize “zombie entertainment”. This is when we’re caught in a pattern of consuming from a firehose feed for entertainment, without intentionality. It’s a fake flow state: time passes quickly and the world fades away, but there’s no cognitive... See more
in order to develop agency, one needs to be psychologically ready to embrace it (i.e., change their worldview) once they spontaneously discover it. For instance, abandoning a victim mentality and being open to taking risks.
You could theoretically change your life at any moment. Move here, date that person, work on that startup, write that blog, dye your hair, adopt a dog. Should I stay, should I go? I don’t know if this agency is freedom or burden. Perhaps all the best things are both.
reminds me of the charles broskoski quote that goes something like... and when nobody waits for you at night, and when nobody calls you in the morning - do you call that freedom or loneliness?
The main paper I've been working on for the last 3 years is out: "Value Capture"! It's about the harms of taking on external metrics and rankings as your own core values.
The argument: you're outsourcing your values. It's fast, but then your values won't be tailored to you.🧵:
Frequent lamenting about how bad things are (in politics or relationships or other culture gripes) is mostly a way for people to avoid responsibility for what they can change. If you constantly repeat that everything is bad, it lets your ego off the hook for doing nothing.