What if you had more agency?

I've been running an exercise. When I have a moment, I think to myself: what would I be doing right now - if I had 10x the agency? And almost every time, it's something different than what I am doing. This is a little hard to admit: I am not agentic in the slightest. I squander my time and potential.

As AGI continues to bootstrap, the value of intelligence decreases. I cannot rely on my intelligence to remain competitive. What then, is the distinguishing factor? Agency.

I feel pressure - to become more agentic. Survival anxiety.

Agency is wanting things

Agentic people want more things, and they want things badly. They are urgent. This drive their agentic behavior. Wanting things is hard - it's easier to remain in relative contentedness. You have to want it badly.

If failure is worse than death, you will not fail. You need to feel contempt for the lack of results, you need to feel like you're being chased. Without this urgency, this discomfort, this need, this hunger, you won't move.

You have to be unreasonable. If someone gives you a reason you cannot do something, reject it. Even it makes you seem unreasonable. If you're worried about what people think of you, you don't want it bad enough and you're never going to make it.

There is no world where what you want does not happen.

Ability

There is nothing I can't do. There really isn't. Most of the lack of agency I see in others stems from a lack of belief in their capacity. But I've seen enough people who are no smarter than me do incredible things. If they can do it, so can I.

Believing in your ability is scary. Most don't want to. It means that success is your responsibility. You own everything going wrong in your life, every challenge you have. If you truly can fix anything, broken things are only broken because you want them to be.

Can you forgive yourself for this?

Become aware of what you really want. I don't want money, or power. Just enough that I can do what I truly want - amuse myself with technology, and build cool things. I'm getting a little older, and scary AI things are happening. I'm going to zoom out, and change what I want. I have to. Again, survival.

Think really hard about what you want. Do you really want it? Or do you just want the things that people tell you you ought to want?

Was there anything you ever *truly* wanted that you didn't get?

Probably not

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Thanks for reading. I'll get better at writing and I'll write more often.