Agency in action
Concrete examples of people seizing initiative and improving situations without waiting for permission.
Your favourite writer's website is awful? Rebuild it and send it to them.
A community you're a part of is doing a bad job of capturing social proof? Interview 10 members and send them finished marketing assets.
Your favourite podcaster doesn't have a searchable set of episodes? Create it.
This is part 2 of a series on high-agency. In part 1 we looked at what agency was and why it's the most important character trait you can develop. Today we're looking at examples of agency in action.
High-agency is an abstract idea. It's easy to read about abstract ideas, nodding along as you do, and never implement the ideas you read about.
Our brains are bad at grasping concepts from explanations, but good at generalising from specific examples. The mathematician and Fields Medal winner Tim Gowers likes to present examples before discussing general concepts. He says: "Why should it be better to do it that way round? Well, if a general definition is at all complex, then you will have quite a lot to hold in your head. This can be difficult, but it is much easier if the various aspects of the definition can be related to an example with which you are familiar. Then the words of the definition cease to be free-floating, so to speak, and instead become labels that you can attach to bits of your mental picture of the example."
Examples take abstract ideas and make them real. They create a story in your mind of what agency looks like. They're the stepping stones for identifying and acting with agency in your own life.
Agency is permissionless. There's no age limit, no rules, and nothing preventing you from acting with it. It creates opportunities and acts as a catalyst for doing work you want to do with people you want to do it with.
Whether it's Burrell Smith becoming lead hardware engineer on the Apple Mac without traditional qualifications, or applicants going the extra mile to land their dream jobs, agency is about taking initiative without waiting for permission.
The common thread across all high-agency individuals is simple: they see a problem or opportunity, and they act on it. They don't wait for someone to tell them it's okay to try.
This is part 2 in the high-agency series. Part 1 looks at what agency is. Part 3 explains how to begin fostering it yourself.