On becoming a high agency person

Stop. I am not ready. It’s not quite right yet. I’ll do it when I have the money. I’m waiting on (fill in the blank).

Does this thought process sound familiar?

No? Well it’s on repeat in my dusty brain, that’s for sure.

I think I have focused way too much on perfection. I am always waiting until I am perfectly “ready”. I delay action, which Brianna Weist, author of The Mountain Is You, would confirm is a sure sign of self sabotage.

Ah, self-sabotage, how familiar I am with her devious ways…

Self sabotage is a limiting habit. Limiting habits are formed to meet an unmet need within us. As a perfectionist, I am far too familiar with self sabotage. Perhaps I have an unmet need for a regulated and controlled environment so a lot of my decision making is fuelled by the desire to make the safest most “right” decision possible.

This is a sure fire way to get absolutely nothing done.

Weist advises that “you need to get clear on what you really want",” and basically act on what matters and leave the rest. She also says that “we step too quickly towards what we think we want, only to find we didn’t think it through and don’t really want it”. A quote from this same book1 has stuck with me for the past few weeks…

Your life is ultimately measured by your outcomes, not your intentions. It is not about what you wanted to do or would have done, but didn’t have the time. It’s not about why you thought you couldn’t; it is only whether or not you did.

What a challenge. Honestly, I feel quite called out and this one quote alone has shifted my perspective significantly. Life is measured by outcomes, not intentions. This is ultimately why it is vital to know what you want, so that you can properly go after it.

Agency, I have noticed, has become the newest buzzword of the substak community (or is it just me?) The more I read, however, the I realise that agency is what I have needed all along!

Agency, according to the dictionary result on Google, is an “action or intervention producing a particular effect”. Honestly this sounds quite basic. Agency is basic. It is simply cause and effect. The reason I believe agency is so important is that many of us (me) just let life happen to us. We become passive participants in our own lives, rather than remembering that we are the main character in our story. We are the cause that leads to the effect. Don’t get me wrong, we are by no means in control of life, but we definitely have control over our own actions. So… if you (like me) want to remember your role in your own freaking life… Let’s dive into:

Apparently, according to my copious reading on the topic, high agency people always assume responsibility and adopt, what the agency experts refer to as “bias for action”.

Bias for action happens when you favour activity over inactivity (even when it’s imperfect). By going through life with a high bias for action, the likelihood is more things will happen. This increases your experience of your unique context and allows you to practice iteration. So by taking more action, you expose yourself to more contextual information, and by repeating this process over and over again, you can make more interesting decisions (or decisions that lead you closer to what you have decided you want).

George Mack offers an interesting take on ways to increase your agency.

1. Pick the option that feels like it will produce the most luck later on

2. Ask specific questions

3. Pick the option that will result in a more interesting story

4. Work less. Focus more.

Henrik Karlson determines that agency is made up of autonomy (figure out what you want) and efficiency (drive to solve the problems you want to solve). So I guess agency really can be distilled into a two step process…

1. Figure out what you want

2. Solve the problems you want to solve

When I sit in the quiet of my room, I can filter some of the noise and arrive at a somewhat still place. In this stillness I have realised that what I really really want is actually a little different to the life the people around me have imagined for me.

I have realised that I crave adventure. All I want is to be outside. To reconnect with my wild, playful, and childlike self. I want to be in wide open spaces. I want to sit with rivers and play in trees. I want a job that makes this kind of living possible, as often as possible.

I also realise that I want to write. I love writing.

I write primarily to find out what I’ve been thinking, and I don’t know until I write it .

— Kevin Kelly

I love that writing helps me process and think, but more than that, it is how I process the world. I want to write more.

I have also realised, in this same quiet, what I don’t want. I don’t want a business that is reliant on social media. In fact, I would like to spend exactly 0 minutes a day on any given social media platform. I don’t want a life full of busy noise, hustle, and time wasting activities. I don’t want to live a life disconnected from my values.

Nature, time with the Creator, quiet, poetry, a slow and soft vocation… These are all things I want.

Now, I challenge you, go into the quiet of your room. Turn of all distractions. Ask yourself this:

What do I want?

If all limitations, obstacles, and loud voices were miraculously void, what would I do with my “one wild and precious life?”2

I think this requires a whole separate post.

No it doesn’t.

Solve the damn problem, Keziah.

I believe that solving the problems you want solved simply requires a lot of iteration. Playing towards your purpose. Trying things on.

The fact is, you will fail. There will be plenty that does not work. There will be some disappointments. Some failed relationships. The occasional loss.

But as you and I both know, this is an essential part of the process. I need to remember this. I get so hooked on what isn’t working. This very day I have been in an anxious puddle over work. I desperately want to create a life for myself where I can work remotely in a way that is both purpose driven and liberating. Today I got caught on all the things I have tried, but to be honest with you, I haven’t tried many of them very hard or diligently. I have iterated through plenty of ideas, for which I am proud, and I think I have found the idea I am ready to stick with. Now I just need to iterate through some solutions to my problem.

Let’s put this into practice shall we? (Let’s use me as an example, but please go away and practice this on your own).

What I want: a job that I can do remotely. A purpose filled vocation that allows me to serve others, whilst also giving me time to be outside and explore the natural world.

The idea: a monthly zoom workshop focused on helping women learn about how to heal their periods naturally (I am a medical herbalist). Some writing on the side.

The problem: I don’t have traffic. I don’t have money for advertising. I don’t want to be on social media anymore.

The solution: start writing regularly on substack. Write 1-3 notes a day. Create some graphics on canva and share them with friends. (This is how far I have gotten with the solution, but hopefully I will come up with some more ideas).

So hopefully by now, you are more clear on what you want and you know that you must take various actions towards what you want (if you want to get what you want, eventually). I am still working on all of this. This will be the journey of my entire 20s I think.

I will leave you with one last question.

What small act of agency can you do today?

Here’s to building agency and taking action before you’re ready.

With love,

Keziah