9 fun ways to increase your agency with zero grinding required

you know you can have fun too right?!

Most people think high agency — happening to life, rather than letting life happen — means grinding 24/7. It doesn’t. You can solve problems, take initiative *and* have fun at the same time:

1. Get a giant whiteboard in your home - My most contrarian belief: We could increase the global economy by 2-3% just by installing large whiteboards in every home. The whiteboard forces you to commit Kidlins’ law: If you write the problem down clearly, then the matter is 50% solved. With a whiteboard, it’s more like 70%; there’s an extra 20% because it stays there over the next few days, whispering into your creative subconscious whenever you walk past it.

(You can get giant Post-it sticky notes the next day from Amazon too)

2. If in doubt, use the luck razor - If stuck with two equal options, pick the one that feels like it will produce the most luck later down the line. I used this razor to go for drinks with a stranger rather than watch Netflix. In hindsight, it was the highest ROI decision I've ever made.

3. Puzzle > Problem - An easy way to increase agency is to remove "problem" from your vocabulary and replace it with "puzzle". It sounds absurd, but "problem" activates my amygdala and "puzzle" activates my prefrontal cortex. Try it. Self-induced placebo that works.

4. Focus on hardware before software - Rule of thumb: Fix hardware (sleep, exercise, diet) before software (psychology). 95% of my software problems seem to magically get fixed when I take care of my hardware. And the remaining 5% is easier to debug once I’ve fixed my hardware. Never try anything more complex without first turning the computer off and on.

5. Ask specific questions - Vague questions could mean anything, so they mean nothing. “How can I be happy?” generates unclear fortune cookie slop: Be grateful. Follow your passion! Live in the moment. Now try: What does my dream week look like hour by hour? What does my nightmare week look like hour by hour? What’s the gap between my current week and the dream or nightmare week? Questions are the answers you might need. (My favourite Oasis lyric)

6. If in doubt, use the story razor - When stuck with two equal options you can’t decide between, ask: What option makes for a more interesting story? Good stories require characters who act. High agency is just another word for being the executive producer of your life. Act as if it’s you at a dinner party five years from now, telling the story. Enhance the plot. Don’t forget Dostoevsky’s golden rule: “But how could you live and how no story to tell?!”.

7. Work less. Focus more - A good rule of thumb I want tattooed on my brain: working hard is overpriced, focusing hard is underpriced. Most of our lives are spent inside the Grove Trap: “There are so many people working so hard, and achieving so little” - Andy Grove. One door out of the Grove Trap is deep mode: Focus 90% of your work hours for 2-4 weeks on your number one bottleneck. Most people context-switch between C-tier tasks all day—emails, meetings, small fixes. They never identify the A-tier task, much less focus on it. One month of clear-minded focus beats a year of distracted hustle grindset.

8. Low agency is downstream from taking yourself too seriously - One thing that helps with taking life less seriously is exploring the absurdity of astrophysics. It’s hard to take my life too seriously when there’s a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way 4 million times the mass of our sun, or staring into the night sky and seeing light from stars that existed over 10,000 years ago in the present moment. My fear of cringe looks tiny when placed in the grand scheme of the universe, let alone the multiverse. If you stare into the stars long enough, the stars begin to stare back into you.

9. Kill your to-do list. Play video games instead - To-do lists trigger anxiety. Video games trigger excitement. Take something that sounds impossible: teaching yourself quantum mechanics. My brain immediately freezes. Where do I even start?
Why? I’m starting at level 300 of the video game. What are the first 5 levels of that video game?

• Level 1 - Write down every learning idea that comes to mind, no filter.
• Level 2 - Search “quantum mechanics beginner” on Amazon. Buy the top-rated intro book.
• Level 3 -Read the first 10 pages.
• Level 4 - Put anything confusing into ChatGPT: “Explain this like I’m a smart 12-year-old.”
• Level 5 - Based on what you learned, write levels 6-10.

The golden rule: Level 1 should always be so easy it’s impossible to feel overwhelmed. Before you know it, you’re at level 5. Bathe in that dopamine and watch overwhelm fade away.

Let me know which one was your favourite. I’ll try and do a version 2 soon. I’ll also be putting more ideas on Substack, as it’s one of the few places that encourage long-form writing.