High Agency

high agency - a personality trait

• Eric Weinstein: When you’re told that something is impossible, is that the end of the conversation, or does that start a second dialogue in your mind, how to get around whoever it is that’s just told you that you can’t do something?
• George Mack thread: High Agency is a sense that the story given to you by other people about what you can/cannot do is just that - a story. And that you have control over the story. High Agency person looks to bend reality to their will. They either find a way, or they make a way. (see excerpts of long essay below)
• Shreyas Doshi post ((2020-06-28) Doshi High Agency What Is It Why Its Important And How To Cultivate It), esp as relates to being a Product Manager
• (2020-07-02) High Agency Product Management

My take:

• high agency is a good (and rare) personality trait to deal with a chaotic world - Reality Hacking
  • semi-related: Sarah Taber tweets: incels: bitches don't like you unless you're high-earning super-confident & good-looking
    women: I can only relate to misery. bring me the sewer boy
  • also: Think Big
• but if you need it to get anything done within your company (gaming the system), that's a badly managed company - Change your Organization - see also Soft Skills

It's you that I fear

George Mack on High Agency.

an idea so simple yet effective it may change how you view reality.

I believe high agency might be the most important idea of the 21st century

You wake up in a 3rd world jail cell. You’re only allowed to call one person you know to get you out of there. Who do you call?

Why did you choose this person? What is it about them that made you pick up the phone?
This person you picked has something. A spark. A je ne sais quoi. That ‘something' is high agency.

Low Agency in a Moment
We put a man on the moon (peak high agency) before anyone put wheels on suitcases. Everyone carried their suitcases — because everyone else carried their suitcases.

How To Spot High Agency People

The High Agency Spectrum

Optimism states the glass is half full. Pessimism states the glass is half empty.
High agency states you’re a tap. You look in the mirror and see a giant tap staring back at you.

The one big thing everyone in that high agency room has in common: They are happening to life. They don’t view the future as a static entity. They view it as something to be shaped by human action.

High agency is such an important idea because the more agency an individual or society has -- the more problems they can solve.

It’s a combination of three distinct skills rarely found together:
Clear thinking
Bias to action
Disagreeability

The bad news: Low agency is the default setting for most of us.

The good news: You have agency over your agency.

moving up the high agency spectrum is possible. The goal of this essay is to do just that

Part 1 - High Agency Software

many have independently installed five similar lines of software in their heads:

1. There’s no unsolvable problem

When faced with a problem, ask your brain, “Does this defy the laws of physics?” — it will reply with “No” — and begin generating ludicrous ways this could be possible

2. There’s no way

There was a special moment in tennis history: The three greatest of all time -- competed at the exact same time. Nadal. Djokovic. Federer

Matthew Syed tells a wonderful story of watching them warm up before Wimbledon... There was no 'way' of doing things they all repeated -- except doing what worked for them.

3. There are no adults

a belief in a perfect group of adults who run the world still remains.
A low agency trap is to put these "adults" on pedestals. To turn flawed humans into a superior god class.

Even the greats were deeply human

The 'adults' aren’t going to save you — they don’t even exist.

4. There’s no normal

The normal paradox: We hide our weirdness and act out “normal” behaviour to be liked by the tribe — but the tribe forgets the normal behaviour.

If you’re hiding your weird individualism to make the tribe like you, remember: They’ll soon forget everything you did or said.

5. There’s only now

You have a finite number of nows

Part 2 - The Highest Agency Human Ever?

Wilbur and Orville had a bias for action: “Let’s start building full-sized gliders in our garage.” (Wright Brothers)

Problem 1: They lived in the wrong location to fly

they calculated the need for winds of 15 miles per hour and sand hills for a soft landing, which they couldn’t find in Ohio.

identified from first principles: Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, had the best weather for flying.

Problem 2: Kitty Hawk was 700 miles away from home.

They packed up the gliders, spent days on a train and set up tents on the sand dunes.

Problem 3: Controlling The Airplane In The Air

testing 200 wing shapes in their homemade wind tunnel

Problem 4 - Every existing engine was too heavy to take off the ground

Solution: They calculated the exact type of engine they needed and built it: A custom aluminium engine weighing just 180lbs.

The 4-year path was brutal:

Part 3 - Escaping Low Agency Traps

found by flipping the high agency tricycle around

Low agency has a series of traps that act like a prison of the mind. Unlike a 3rd world prison, there are no physical guards or walls. They don’t even exist in physical reality.

Countless low agency traps can occur. I’ve listed the five most common ones and potential escape plans.

1. The Vague Trap

The vague trap hides from agency by never defining the problem, let alone a solution. It lives on vague fluffy thoughts.

Most thoughts aren’t even clear sentences. It’s a series of emotional GIFs, JPEGs and prompts bouncing around consciousness like a random Tumblr page.

Vague Trap Escape Route: Define the problem in simple words --out of your head

Write your thoughts down. Draw the problem. Use a whiteboard. Create a spreadsheet

trying to refine problems and solutions in the simplest, clearest, most specific language possible.

The vague trap is often downstream from vague questions.

2. The Midwit Trap

It comes from the midwit meme: The dreaded midwit in the middle.

The less intelligent guy on the left often has more agency than the midwit because he didn’t have the cognitive horsepower to bullshit himself.

Midwit Trap Escape Route: What would the guy on the left do? Find it via inversion.

Step 1 - Stop trying to be the guy on the right - The midwit mistake is to try and be the smart guy on the right.

Step 2 - Become the guy on the left - Find the simple ideas via inversion. Flip the problem around. And take them seriously before adding any complexity.

E.g. "I want to become a better writer”

how would you ensure you become a worse writer?
Do not write
Write inconsistently
Write about things you find boring

Flip them around and you've found the simple ideas the guy on the left will come up with:
Write
Write consistently
Write about things that excite you

3. The Attachment Trap

too attached to past assumptions to see new high agency options.

This is where your mind has assumptions about reality, treats these assumptions as unquestionable facts — and then starts looking for evidence to support it without once questioning the assumptions.

Attachment Trap Escape Route: What would I do if I had 10x the agency?

Imagine you have an evil identical twin whose sole job is to have 10x the agency of you. What ideas would they have?

4. The Rumination Trap

Rumination Trap Escape Route: How can I take action on this now?

It’s being stuck in never-ending ‘what if it goes wrong?’ loops.

""Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over” - Jeff Bezos

One tool to make this easier is to reframe decisions as experiments

5. The Overwhelm Trap

Learn quantum mechanics? Where do I begin?! Black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu? Where do I begin?! Build an airplane? Where do I begin?!

The overwhelm trap turns the problem into a badly designed video game. It looks at where you are now — level 0 — and contrasts that with the ideal — level 100 — feels overwhelmed and runs away.

Video games break us out of the overwhelm trap by chunking everything down into small enough chunks to create momentum

Overwhelm Trap Escape Route: What’s the smallest first step I can take?

*Let's pick something absurd people think is impossible: Teaching yourself Quantum Mechanics. That's level 100. What are the first 5 levels of that video game?

"Level 1 - Write down everything I could possibly do to start learning quantum mechanics "Level 2 - Use notes from level 1 to create the next 3 levels*

Level 1 is always an easy enough action to not feel overwhelmed. Level 2 builds out the rest of the video game. And boom, you’re already on level 3

Part 4 - Turning Bullshit Into Reality

Step 1 - Open up a blank page. Write down esoteric things you value. E.g. Value 1 - High Agency.

Step 2 - Write down 10 specific ways you can display that vague value in reality with specific action. Don’t think. Just dump.

Step 3 - Pick one. If you want to play hardcore mode: Pick the one that gives you the strongest sense of fear.

Step 4 - Write down every micro step you need to take.

Step 5 - Do each micro step now.

Step 6 - Feel the emotion of being a live player

Step 7 - Come back tomorrow and repeat

You pick things you value and let your creativity work its magic by aiming towards a value. Your self identity will begin to shift by doing high agency things that come up.

Think deeply about the things you value (gratitude, love, romance, loyalty, ambition etc) -- channel your creativity and then operationalize them.

If your turning bullshit into reality session creates problems you get stuck on, try using these tools:

Tool 1 - The High Agency Flow Chart

Tool 2 - The Swedish House Mafia Technique

*Step 1 - Collect the smartest people you know.

Step 2 - Tell them about your 3rd world jail cell. (Problem you're stuck on)

Step 3 - Lock the door. Block out the outside world.

Step 4 - Keep rallying ideas back and forth like a tennis game. Take immediate action on the best ideas.*

Tool 3 - The Story Razor

If stuck between two potential options, ask: What is the best story?

Life is a form of self storytelling. We're continually retelling ourselves our life story, but very few people think of themselves as authors of their story, not mere subjects.

maximizing the interestingness of their life story.

Amjad Masad

Tool 4 - Ask For Help

*"I have three mentors.

When I’m stuck on a problem and need their help, I take the time to write a good description of my dilemma*

Then, after this whole process, I realize I don’t need to bother them because the answer is now clear… None of them know they are my mentors.” - Derek Sivers

Tool 5 - A Change of Perspective is Worth 50 IQ Points

The End. Don't Forget: There's Only Now.

Bonus Material: The High Agency Library