In game theory, an “agent” is a thing that can have intentions and make decisions.

“Do AI models like ChatGPT have agency?” is a popular question nowadays. Currently most people in my bubble still answer no, but the line has been getting blurry. AI technology is a useful example to start with, because even though we know ChatGPT is just software that does text completion, it seems very human most of the time. In many cases when you talk to ChatGPT the experience is just like talking to a human.

That brings us to: “Do humans have agency?” Classically the answer is “Of course, yes,” but if you look closely you might notice that much of the time we, too, are just doing something like “text completion.” At our jobs and even in many casual social interactions, we’re often following an implicit script—playing a well defined role the way ChatGPT does. Do you ever say “sorry” when you’re really thinking “You’re wrong”? Do you say “Sure that’s fine” when it’s not, just for the sake of social ease? Aside from text completion, think of action completion: do you follow through on a behavior just because it’s the thing to do? Keep showing up to a job you dislike? Keep living in a town that bores you?

Yet, at other times, humans do wildly agentic things like quit their comfortable jobs, or move to another country, or solve a unique problem. In those cases we appear to be acting out of free will, though that’s a fuzzy concept that’s hard to define. We could at least say that we’re acting on some very deep intention, and maybe we don’t fully understand the source of it ourselves, but we’re fiddling with all the levers available to us in our lives to change our world in a specific way.

So, in different situations people can behave with high or low agency. But you’ll also notice that some people just seem to display high agency more often than others. I have a friend who’s very connected socially—he has a big network of friends and acquaintances—and a hobby of his is getting into events/parties that he really has no business being in. He’s charismatic enough to just show up and make friends. One day he told me he’d written and self-published a children’s book over the past week, because he just wanted to. That’s a pattern of high agency.

I knew a woman who was a social media influencer—with no 9-to-5 job, she made all her income from brand endorsement partnerships. When I last talked to her, she was working on a screenplay about her life experiences—and I mean really working on it, she’d already hired people to help her develop it. She had plans to partner with a chef she knew to develop and market her own brand of salsa. Who knew you could do that? That, again, is a pattern of high agency.

How much do I need?

It’s popular to describe high agency as “Main Character Energy,” referring to the fact that the main character in a story is the person who does interesting things and has unusual experiences.

From this perspective it seems like agency is an absolutely good thing to have. I’m not sure though—there are probably times when it’s better to be able to settle in and go on autopilot for a while. Some situations are out of your control and the best course it just to get through them without freaking out. Maybe, in those situations, trying to have high agency would make you depressed when confronted by your boundedness.

So perhaps it’s a balance. But, you are living in the 21st Century modern world and most of the time the choices before you are innumerable. It’s very hard to really get stuck in a rut: I see people with far fewer opportunities than me do far more agentic things all the time.

I once wrote on consumption and productivity and claimed the modern world is always skewing us toward consumption, away from the happy balance between the two. Likewise I think the modern world is always skewing us on the script-following-vs-agency spectrum. It’s just so easy to fall into a decent and well tested lifestyle script, despite all the opportunities that exist if you look for them. If you agree, then you’ll want to intentionally increase your agency, to counteract the influence of modern life.

The easy shortcut answer to “How do I become more __?” is always: Spend more time with people who already have that trait. There’s no need to deconstruct what the trait is or where it comes from; just utilize the power of social influence to shape your character the way you want to.

As a substitute, you could read a lot of writing by people with that trait. When I read writings about high agency, like Things you’re allowed to do, I immediately feel more agentic.

Second, you could focus on avoiding the factors that reduce your natural human agency. That’d be things like addictions and other “scripts” you follow or “ruts” you get stuck in. For example, “Every time I go out with these friends on Friday night, I drink too much and am knocked out on Saturday.” Then, you could invest a little willpower in changing that pattern, and you’d end up with more agency on your Saturdays.

So much has already been written on agency, so I want to end here and let this be a jumping-off point into some of the related content that I’ve found helpful over the years: