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This article really spoke to me, but, ironically, I am concerned about my ability to put it into practice. I feel like there are areas of my life I have extrem

This article really spoke to me, but, ironically, I am concerned about my ability to put it into practice. I feel like there are areas of my life I have extreme agency over and others I have no agency over. I hate it because the areas I feel I lack agency in run counter to my sense of self. Things I struggle to do don't feel like things I should struggle to do. I wonder if this is something I learned when I was young? Some examples: * I live on my own in SF. I moved to California after college and confidently left my small hometown without much support. * I've led teams of engineers in fast-paced startup environments and gotten us to exceptional results. I wouldn't bat an eye at interviewing technical executives. * I've quit my job, repeatedly, without backups in place, to pursue technical side projects that sound meaningful to me until I run ~out of money. * I've led groups of 50+ people through week-long music festivals, coordinating all the people, money, accommodations, etc. * I can confidently speak to large groups of people without feeling self-conscious. * I've travelled alone, internationally, for work and everything went great and without cause for concern. And yet...: * I learned to drive at 32. I'm still "scared" of the concept, don't own a vehicle, and haven't integrated driving into my lifestyle. * I can make a down-payment on a house, but continue to rent because it sounds big and scary to do such a thing. * I "fall into" relationships and jobs rather than actively evaluating my wants, pursuing them, contrasting varying options, etc. * I would never dream of travelling alone, internationally, by myself just to do a thing. It sounds scary doing it for myself, but doing it for work sounds trivial. * I'm very prone to overthinking situations and trying to solve them in my head before taking a small, tangible step forward with physical actions. This feels similar to lacking agency -- like I would trust myself to gain agency but only once I'm confident I've seen where taking action will take me. Sometimes I feel like I don't understand myself because I feel like all of these issues should be in the same class. I've done things others feel are challenging, but struggle to apply that same mindset to tasks I know others find trivial. Does this mean I am lacking in agency? Does this mean I just have weird standards for myself? Or is it something else entirely?

jamilton 3y ago
IMO, everything in your "and yets" except relationships and overthinking sound like ordinary preferences, rather than lack of agency. Like, if you actively want to change those preferences and haven't, maybe that's less agentic, but they seem reasonable to me. Although I'm biased because I share some of those traits. And the other two I would personally consider in meaningfully different categories than your successes, so maybe they're just not in line with your strengths (yet).
throwaway98797 3y ago
anything external is possible anything internal is impossible ie make money ez lose weight impossible got to be some kind of psych issue
collin_of_this 3y ago
Perhaps agency is less one single 'meta-skill' than a bunch of domain specific 'micro-skills'. E.g., strategic thinking in a tech company leadership roll is one skill (or set of skills), strategic thinking in the context of a personal relationship is another skill (or set of skills); managing fear in the context of public speaking is one skill (or set of skills), managing fear in the context of driving is another skill (or set of skills). Sometimes skills that seem superficially similar are surprisingly non-transferable and context specific. Ultimately, I think that the most generally applicable advice is getting feedback from others, getting an outside view, blindspot fuzzing, etc. Bottlenecks are usually not the obvious things, because usually the obvious things have been tried, without success. [That is, until the obvious thing is so obvious that everyone assumes it has been tried before without actually trying it. In which case it is again non-obvious!] Personally, I have found that in personal relationships, a fairly effective strategy to get "unstuck" is to take actions that seem bizarre, unimaginable, or otherwise far outside the distribution of my ordinary responses. I do this because usually if I feel stuck, or there is some unpleasant dynamic, then a part of that dynamic that keeps it going is my actions, which are based in what I tend to do. If I find myself in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th iteration of something unpleasant that I feel like has played out before, I'll do something far outside the distribution of my ordinary actions, and it has a much better chance of getting me unstuck (though, it still might only be a 1%-10% chance of getting me unstuck per random action). Perhaps there is some sort of general algorithm in that for getting unstuck. A sort of exhaustive process of elimination, with some sort of outside generativity, and some feedback loops grounded in reality, that is one's best chance at escaping local optima.
overengineer 3y ago
I am feeling the same way. It makes me get confused about myself a lot. I think it is ok that, I can fear from or fail at things that are easy for other people while something that is hard for the most people can be trivial for me.

jamilton 3y ago

IMO, everything in your "and yets" except relationships and overthinking sound like ordinary preferences, rather than lack of agency. Like, if you actively want to change those preferences and haven't, maybe that's less agentic, but they seem reasonable to me. Although I'm biased because I share some of those traits. And the other two I would personally consider in meaningfully different categories than your successes, so maybe they're just not in line with your strengths (yet).

throwaway98797 3y ago

anything external is possible anything internal is impossible ie make money ez lose weight impossible got to be some kind of psych issue

collin_of_this 3y ago

Perhaps agency is less one single 'meta-skill' than a bunch of domain specific 'micro-skills'. E.g., strategic thinking in a tech company leadership roll is one skill (or set of skills), strategic thinking in the context of a personal relationship is another skill (or set of skills); managing fear in the context of public speaking is one skill (or set of skills), managing fear in the context of driving is another skill (or set of skills). Sometimes skills that seem superficially similar are surprisingly non-transferable and context specific. Ultimately, I think that the most generally applicable advice is getting feedback from others, getting an outside view, blindspot fuzzing, etc. Bottlenecks are usually not the obvious things, because usually the obvious things have been tried, without success. [That is, until the obvious thing is so obvious that everyone assumes it has been tried before without actually trying it. In which case it is again non-obvious!] Personally, I have found that in personal relationships, a fairly effective strategy to get "unstuck" is to take actions that seem bizarre, unimaginable, or otherwise far outside the distribution of my ordinary responses. I do this because usually if I feel stuck, or there is some unpleasant dynamic, then a part of that dynamic that keeps it going is my actions, which are based in what I tend to do. If I find myself in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th iteration of something unpleasant that I feel like has played out before, I'll do something far outside the distribution of my ordinary actions, and it has a much better chance of getting me unstuck (though, it still might only be a 1%-10% chance of getting me unstuck per random action). Perhaps there is some sort of general algorithm in that for getting unstuck. A sort of exhaustive process of elimination, with some sort of outside generativity, and some feedback loops grounded in reality, that is one's best chance at escaping local optima.

overengineer 3y ago

I am feeling the same way. It makes me get confused about myself a lot. I think it is ok that, I can fear from or fail at things that are easy for other people while something that is hard for the most people can be trivial for me.