202510082217 Status: #idea Tags: #agency #self_improvement # Agency can be defined along four axes Agency is: 1. Knowing what you want in life 2. Being able to form autonomous goals in life that move you towards what you want 3. Having the ability & skills to execute towards these goals 4. Having the drive & willingness to apply your skills in pursuit of these goals, even in the face of skepticism or shaming from your peers This gives us 4 axes along which we can improve in order to become higher agency: 1. Know yourself and what you want better 2. Become better at breaking down pie-in-the-sky desires into concrete goals 3. Work on the skills and abilities relevant to your field/goals 4. Improve your conscientiousness and disagreeableness These axes allow us to step back and assess why we are less agentic than we’d like and implement concrete plans to improve the meta-skill of agency. For instance, if you have no idea what you want in life or what is meaningful to you, you can’t set coherent goals. Start by proving there. ([[Even if teleological world views are wrong, they're useful]]) If you have a clear life purpose and goals along with a will to achieve them, you probably need to improve your skills in your desired domain. If you have the skills, goals, and life mission but still struggle to be agentic, you need to become significantly more disagreeable and action-oriented. This can be as simple as training yourself to question default assumptions - do not take received wisdom as gospel unless you can rationally prove to yourself that it is indeed necessary. ([[Elon Musk's approach to business]] is a good example of questioning default assumptions and high disagreeability) Improving along these axes isn’t easy, but it at least gives a map for how to improve. --- # References [On Agency by Henrik and Johanna Karlsson](https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/agency) [How to Be More Agentic by Cate Hall](https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/how-to-be-more-agentic)