Agency + falling in love

Find me a high-agency person who believes there is always a better way...

One of the deepest combo concepts in the world is the combustive power of mixing a high-agency mindset with an unmet need. Think about what this means: falling in love with a problem and making it your life’s work pursuing the solve.

I’m convinced that in this new world of algorithms, agents bots, AI — where everything can be done for us effortlessly — being high-agency, “the power of someone who can create energy to move forward,” will get us to important outcomes.

Firstly, being high-agency leads to deep personal satisfaction. Recall the definition above. Imagine you’re able to generate internal combustion and drive ideas into reality. This is momentum and the foundational fuel for a life lived well. No one likes to feel like they are regressing or plateauing. It’s inevitable to hit periods like that as a human part of life. But in the medium-arc, progress is everything, no matter how small or incremental. So when you are high-agency, you will craft your time, treasure, resources on the things you care about.

Secondly, being high-agency is incredibly important for culture. Think about it. I would reckon that most of us don’t likes to be told what to do. (Sidenote: please though don’t confuse “not liking to be told” to meaning you can’t be fully open-minded about feedback and input. Both can and should equally exist in harmony and in the right ratio depending on the situation).

What I really mean is that being a robot who only “executes” on others peoples wants and desires is just less fulfilling than having a say in determining the what, why, and of what to execute. Now, of course, early on in life you learn a great deal through “execution” — learning to refine, improve, and taking to feedback well. But over Arc of a life, thinking about the flip-side as “low-agency”, we become passive and order-takers. I can’t stress this enough. This is death for a person’s potential and for any team, culture, or business. You will never get the best out of someone’s divinely ordained talents and forged experiences by wanting only “low-agency” compliance.

I’ve seen many examples of the unintentional consequences of “low-agency” culture. I won’t get into specifics here, but it is devastating. Productivity grinds to a halt, innovation falters, and it is only about keeping to the “status quo.” At best, you have “high agency” people who have “low agency” people execute, but when push comes to shove — do you want an empowered person or the opposite?

So what happens when you take the best of agency and combine it with something you care deeply about? Literally it’s as magical as going from zero to one (from nothing to something). You spark creation.

So how do you fall in love with a problem or cause (or work)?

A heuristic I find to be very true (oh the power of heuristic) is to think bout what you were passionate about at 18. What did you spend your day doing? What hobbies or interests did you have in your free time? What got you excited? Those are the things that will proxy well and provide a lens in which you might find something meaningful. You see, it’s important to fall in love with something — that gets you out of the bed more days than not. It’s obviously not sunshine and peaches each day, but it should be something you would return to naturally without the adult pressures of responsibilities.

High-agency + falling in love with a problem = Magic. Rocket fuel. Sparks. Momentum. Acceleration. Don’t discount this combination.