High agency thought

When you're told something ‘is impossible’—does that end the conversation, or does it ignite the fire within?

I’ve been thinking about this concept of 'high agency' thought—the combination of resourcefulness, a healthy skepticism of 'best practices', and a functional internal locus of control, ie, the ability to manage, or even modify, one's interpretation of the way things appear, or ought to be.

Let's say it's raining outside. Is the weather 'bad'?

One might say that if it's raining outside, we can't go outside because the weather is bad—but if only the weather was good, we could go outside. This creates a sense that external conditions are what our actions should be dependent on; if conditions are bad, we can't do the thing.

Yet this is the mental model that does not—cannot lead to the invention of the umbrella.

Here's another example: We put a man on the moon before we put wheels on luggage.

It wasn't until 1991 that a pull-out handle was engineered onto luggage which, based on everything I've ever seen and experienced at Terminal 3, I'm not sure I'd want to live in a world without.

There's a famous experiment in psychology called 'The Candle Problem' where participants are given a box full of tacks and a candle, and is asked to use the fewest number of tacks to affix the candle to the wall.

Most everyone tried as they might to tack the candle directly to the wall, getting wax everywhere and unsuccessfully performing the task. Only a few outlier participants had the Eureka! moment where they realized they could simple use the box that the tacks came in to make a platform on the wall to simply place the candle in.

The lesson of 'high-agency' thought is that the mind has a tendency to crave easy answers, and may shoot down ideas that don't fit traditional experience.

But by cranking a little more juice into the ole brain, by stepping out of your comfort zone—as painful as that can be!—we can discover outcomes never before conceived.

Though if it's raining outside your comfort zone, it might be helpful to invent the umbrella first.