On Agency

1. Autonomy
2. Efficacy

From the article: "Agency, as I see it, is an amalgamation of two skills, or mental dispositions: autonomy and efficacy."

The capacity to formulate autonomous goals—to dig inside and figure out what wants to happen through you, regardless of how others view it.

From the article: "Agency requires the capacity to formulate autonomous goals in life—the capacity to dig inside and figure out what wants to happen through you, no matter how strange or wrong it seems to others."

The ability and willingness to pursue your goals—having the "will to know" and drive to see reality as it is so you can solve problems effectively.

From the article: "Agency also requires the ability and willingness to pursue those goals. It requires the 'will to know,' the drive to see reality as it is, so you can manipulate it deftly and solve the problems you want to solve."

1. Doing what you're "supposed to do" without reflection on personal values
2. Being passive or ineffective when facing problems

From the article: "The opposite of agency can mean one of two things. Either (1) doing what you are 'supposed to do,' playing social games that do not align with what, on reflection, seems valuable to you and/or (2) being passive or ineffective in the face of problems."

Lack of imagination—he'd never seen anyone solve problems agentically and failed to imagine that things he hadn't seen done could be done by him.

From the article: "I think the main reason I didn't realize my problems were solvable was a lack of imagination. I'd never seen anyone solve problems in an agentic way, and I failed to imagine that things I hadn't seen done could be done by me."

Treating apparent impossibilities as just problems that can be presumed solvable, rather than accepting them as fixed limitations.

From the article: "He was agentic enough to realize that the fact that kids until then had never been allowed to make films was just a problem, and thus could be presumed solvable."

"Is this really impossible, or is it just a problem I haven't figured out how to solve yet?"

From the article: "I've lived long enough to have learned that most things are actually doable if you care enough... that problems are solveable; that if I direct my attention to the problem and learn to understand it, and act on what I learn, the problem will, sooner or later, cave in."

He bundled together separate concepts: "being a writer," "having a publisher," and "getting a salary from writing"—treating them as inseparable when they're not the same thing.

Because bundled thinking makes you miss obvious solutions—you need clarity on your actual goal to evaluate options and make progress.

From the article: "Without a clear idea of what it would mean to solve the problem, it was hard to evaluate options and make consistent progress."

Whether you've bundled separate concepts together and are confusing "the thing I want" with "how I think it should happen."

From the article: "If someone had pointed this out, it would have been clear to me that the part I cared about was thinking on the page—I would have never picked having a publisher or getting paid to write over getting to write interesting things."

You have to really look at the problem and solution space, accepting responsibility for learning what's necessary to make the problem go away.

From the article: "To be agentic, you have to really look at the problem and at the solution space and accept the responsibility of learning what is necessary to make the problem go away."

"What is the simplest solution that could possibly work?"

From the article: "If you have a clear understanding of the goal, there are often paths that lead there that are much shorter than the default path. A good question to ask is: what is the simplest solution that could possibly work?"

Their mental model of the situation is too limited to show them a way out—they fail to understand their problems and the solution space.

From the article: "When I think about friends of mine who struggle to be agentic, the problem isn't precisely that they do the default thing; it's that they fail to understand their problems and the solution space. They act in incoherent or ineffective ways because their mental model of the situation is too limited to show them a way out."

Default solutions usually have unnecessary bells and whistles that aren't needed for your specific outcome, making them more costly and time-consuming.

From the article: "This is because the 'default solution' usually has all sorts of bells and whistles that are not necessary for the concrete outcome you are looking for."

Find the shortest path to your specific goals by understanding what actually needs to happen, rather than following conventional approaches.

From the article: "Put another way: Herzog mapped the actual landscape and found the shortest path to his specific goals."

He never thinks about attending classes—he does the reading on his own or seeks out experts for conversations.

From the article: "If I want to explore something, I never think about attending a class; I do the reading on my own or seek out experts for conversations."

He focused directly on capturing the images his film needed rather than following "proper" procedures—he had his eyes locked on the goal, not the process.

From the article: "At every turn, crew members let [Herzog] know that they considered his directing habits strange, impulsive, even amateurish... Herzog had his eyes clearly locked on the goal, capturing the images he knew the film needed, and he didn't care if the way he did that was 'unprofessional.'"

"When you do open heart surgery, you don't go for the appendix or toenails, you go straight for the beating heart."

From the article: "But I have always filmed only what I need for the screen, and nothing else. When you do open heart surgery, you don't go for the appendix or toenails, you go straight for the beating heart."

Like "a drop of water running down the trunk of a beech tree, feeling out the details of this world... looking for the path of least resistance."

From the article: "What I needed was to let my care grab hold of me and pull me away like a river—or like a drop of water running down the trunk of a beech tree, feeling out the details of this world, the bark, the lichens, looking for the path of least resistance, running down, down, into the dark wet earth we call home."

"Is this the shortest path to what I actually want, or am I following this approach just because it's how things are 'supposed' to be done?"

From the article: "At the heart of agency lies a willingness to question defaults. To be agentic, you have to treat 'how things are supposed to be done' as just one option among many."

Describe the problem in detail—what would it mean for this problem to be solved? What does success actually look like?

From the article: "These days, when I want to do something hard, I like to start by describing the problem in as much detail as possible. What would it mean for this problem to be solved? What does the world look like when I've made the problem go away?"

Define what you want to achieve (the function/outcome) rather than what the solution should look like (the specific method).

From the article: "Not what the solution should be (not 'I want to sign with a major Swedish publisher'), but the effect I want the solution to achieve ('I will consider the solution successful if and only if I have food on the table, good friends, and 30 hours a week to write... but, as long as I get that, I'm agnostic about what the specific solution is')."

That everything can be learned, understood, and reshaped to fit your values—the limitation is often in your head, not in reality.

From the article: "I remember when we discovered that the brick wall in the kitchen needed to be torn down and rebuilt, and I was like, 'I can't do this. We have to sell the house. I can't hammer a hole from the kitchen straight out to the garden.' But then I just did it and it completely changed my view of what a wall is—it is something understandable, something I can take apart and put back together and manipulate to better fit our needs. And everything is like that. Everything can be learned, everything can be understood and reshaped to fit our values."

That high agency often looks odd to people embedded in conventional systems—focus on results, not approval.

From the article: "People with high agency tend to be obsessed with finding simpler solutions, to the point where normal people think they are idiots."

He started various companies where he could work intensely for two weeks, then take two weeks off to write—a moving company, a plumbing business.

Key insight: Creative solutions to funding don't have to look like traditional career paths.

Two days later, he registered his own company—Werner Herzog Filmproduktion—realizing he would have to become his own producer.

Key insight: Rejection is information that helps clarify the next strategy to try.

Agency is often almost gentle—an attunement to the world and the self, a feeling out the details of reality, and finding the path of least resistance. Like the force of a river being pulled toward the sea.

Vertical integration allowed him to move faster and save money. He could never have done what he did if he worked in the default Hollywood way, relying on large teams and specialized professionals.