I’m always thinking about agency. Ever since I learned that we all start out helpless, and we can learn to have more agency, I keep thinking about this topic. I recently read this screenshot essay by David Perell:

“Lately I’ve caught myself spewing increasingly abstract definitions of what it means to be “high agency”: one who has the belief and means to change their circumstances; one who takes ownership of their future; one who finds the third door. But it’s simpler than that. Agency is realizing that you can just DO things. Hosting an event is as simple as sending out invites. Making a friend is a DM. Writing is just typing. Being high agency is independent of the quality of the output itself—in fact an obsession with quality is often a convenient excuse for those who would otherwise be able to create singular things. Just go and do things.” — (David Perell , You Can Just Do Things)

When we try to do something new we make it more difficult than it needs to be by using complicated words. Agency makes it sound like it’s some esoteric attribute some exhalted humans can achieve. But it’s more like the dumb guy on the mid-twit meme: just do something.

The technical term in psychology for agency is Self Efficacy, which is even worse in jargon terms. But reading the wiki page is pretty interesting. In Psychology they look at how much a person believes they are capable of reaching for a goal.

Crazily, this belief about what you can and cannot do has even better results than your genetics!

“Upon looking at the results, researchers found that the people who had been told they have the good mutation outperformed the other group - perhaps not a surprise. What was more of a surprise was when they analysed what was going on inside of their bodies. The lungs of people without the athletic mutation who had been told that they should perform well were blowing off Co2 more efficiently, they had lower overall heart rates and a lower Rate of Perceived Exertion. And the kicker: they were more efficient than the people who did have the good mutation but were told that they didn’t. Because of what they were told, different groups were able to reverse the effectiveness of their genetic markers.” — Chris Williamson

What this means is that your level of optimism, your belief in what you can achieve, can impact your physical performance more than your genetics.

You are not only limited by your beliefs. But you are limited more by your beliefs than anything else.

There’s an easy way to benefit from this. Do things. Do things that give assymetric return: ask people for things. Give compliments. If you want to do something “in the future” DO IT NOW.

Just do the thing.

Don’t get caught up in all the avoiding strategies: Chis Williamson shared a list of things that are not Doing The Thing.

Just do the thing.

It’s not that you can’t do it. It’s that you haven’t done it yet.

Just do the thing.

Here’s a list of things you can do, that will help you improve your agency.