becoming a high-agency person

do you know how to get things done?

Part of my job includes studying successful and happy people: what underlying characteristics make them stand out? What are they doing differently from everybody else? Like most people, I’ve had instances where I look at someone achieving and exceeding my goals, and sigh. I find myself wishing for a divine intervention that will deliver crucial information to my doorstep letting me know that this person actually has some kind of solid external advantage that unfortunately just wasn’t available to me – I knew it, I can stop comparing myself and go back to living in peace. I couldn’t have found myself in their position anyway, no matter how hard I tried. That used to happen a lot before I realized that I was just making excuses to avoid assuming higher agency for myself. Most of the time, it wasn’t that they were a secret nepo baby, have guardian angels, or connections I could never access; it was a single element in their personality.

I think there’s one trait you can develop that makes you a lot (italicised a lot!) more likely to reach your goals and your definition of success, and that is having a bias for action. In other words, being a high-agency person.

I don’t remember where I first stumbled upon the concept of ‘bias for action’, but I immediately recognized it as something that’s been permeating all my conversations around success, apparent in everyone I admire. Having a bias for action means that you favour action over inaction, even when it’s imperfect. You can spot that in people who succeed, and see its lack in those who stay stagnant and assume their goals are too unrealistic. People who have a bias for action don’t overthink every idea and every step. Instead, they propel themselves into action when they have momentum and inspiration: two things we should learn to grab when they appear, and run with them.

High-agency people assume responsibility for themselves and learn to get things done. How many people do you know that follow through on their ideas, put things in motion and keep them going? It is a skill that’s rarer than we think. They know that they have personal agency, that their life will be shaped by their own decisions first and foremost. High personal agency doesn’t let you overthink an idea or a life change for years before taking action. It pushes you to act for the sake of acting, to at least go from 0 to 1, and figure out the rest when you get there.

You know those people that are always saying they want to do this, do that, when the time is right, except the time is never right? They’re high on talk and low on action. You’ve heard them talk about their plans so many times but have never seen solid follow-through, so you’re now tuning out when they bring up everything they want to do. High-agency people value doing. You’ll see them making moves and staying consistent, because they have internalized the realization that they’re personally responsible for creating the life they want. They don’t need a hundred external opinions to validate their plans and decisions; they’re tuned into themselves and will take tangible action towards their goals.

Inaction fuels inertia. Inertia is difficult to break, because breaking it feels like a big step, a daunting change. But it doesn’t have to be. Take a step from 0 to 1 and change something, you don’t have to be sure that it will work out, and it absolutely doesn’t need to be perfect. Just do something and get one tangible, measurable step closer to your goals.

High agency is shared by all the successful and happy people I know, and its absence is the main culprit keeping many ambitious and smart people stagnant. Thinking about it as a skill that you can cultivate, turns it from a vague concept into a real trait that you can work on developing. You start by making difficult decisions, initiating a daunting change, following an instinct that you know is pulling you in a certain direction, putting something out there. Whatever it may be, in work, relationships, life, you can start cultivating high agency by cutting through inertia sharply and without looking back – it will be easier from then on.