Agency

The mismatch between past and present doesn’t seem trivial to me — if the “you” of today can so blithely disregard the “you” of yesterday, then it follows that the “you” I’m talking to now might very well not be the one who shows up for our date tomorrow. There’s a kind of unpredictable change that seems to lie outside of the virtues of growth and... See more

there’s no character trait more essential to individual and societal progress than agency. Agency is the embodied conviction that you have the power to create meaningful change in your life and transform your vision into reality. It’s the engine that powers human progress.

if i'd had more agency when I was younger,

I would have acted on some truly terrible decisions that I may never have recovered from

...which makes me suspicious of agency as the latest all-good panacea

How can I thrive while operating contrary to dominant social and cultural trends?

The experts all agree: the trend, they say, is your friend.

All you need to do is identify it, and then you ride it out. And, true enough, I’ve watched thousands of people make a buck doing just that. If you are active in the arts, that may be the single most obvious... See more

I was realizing how many personal and interpersonal issues ultimately traced back to feeling like one has little to no agency. Everything from confidence to motivation can be traced back to agency, at least to some extent.

building a world for yourself creates magnetism in the purest sense