High Agency: What It Means and How to Practise It

It is a habit of action you can build, not a fixed type of person. The phrase comes from start-up and self-improvement writing, not from a single study. That matters. No test tells you whether you "are" high-agency. What counts is what you did about the thing you were waiting on.

What does high agency mean?

In everyday use, a high-agency person hears "that can't be done" and starts looking for another way to do it. A low-agency response accepts the first answer and waits.

Many people know the phrase from George Mack, who credits Eric Weinstein. On The Tim Ferriss Show, episode 131, published on 13 January 2016, Ferriss asked Weinstein to define high agency. In the episode transcript, he describes it as treating being told something is impossible as the start of a second conversation about how to get round the problem, rather than the end of the first one.

Mack spread the idea, first in a Twitter thread in November 2018 and later in a long essay, High Agency in 30 Minutes, which thanks Weinstein and Ferriss for the idea. The essay is built on stories about founders, inventors, artists and athletes. It does not cite research showing that agency leads to success, so read it as a point of view, not as evidence.

Is agency the same as self-efficacy or confidence?

No. Several research ideas sit close to high agency, but each means something narrower or different. Knowing which is which stops a slogan from passing as a scientific finding.

Confidence is a feeling about yourself. Self-efficacy is a belief about one task. Agency is acting with intention, and you can act before you feel ready.

"Sense of agency" is the odd one out. In neuroscience it means the experience of controlling your own actions and, through them, events around you. Researchers study it in lab tasks, and it can change in some mental health conditions. It is not about ambition or initiative. If you searched for it expecting self-improvement advice, that is why the results look technical.

What does the research link these ideas to? One meta-analysis pooled 274 correlations from workplace studies of four related traits, including locus of control. People with a more internal locus of control were, on average, a little more satisfied at work (an estimated correlation of .32) and performed a little better (.22). These are modest links from work settings. They do not show that believing in control causes better results, and none of the studies measured "high agency" as the internet uses the phrase.

What does high versus low agency look like?

The difference often shows up in one sentence. Here are some waiting thoughts beside an acting version:

• "Someone should sort out the rota." I will draft a fairer rota and ask the manager whether we can try it for a week.
• "I can't start until I have the right kit." I will make a rough version with what I have.
• "They never invite me anywhere." I will invite two people for a walk on Sunday.
• "The council never fixes that streetlight." I will report it on the council's form and keep the reference number.

Low agency is often a reasonable response to past experience. If asking has rarely worked for you, waiting can feel sensible. It is not proof of laziness. Bandura's review notes that personal agency works within a wide network of social and structural influences.

Can you become more high-agency?

Bandura describes agency as a capacity that people exercise through planning, steering themselves and reflecting. That treats it as something you do, which makes practice the sensible place to start.

Animal research points the same way, with caveats. A 2016 review by Steven Maier and Martin Seligman revised the old theory of learned helplessness. The old idea was that animals exposed to shocks they could not control learned that nothing they did mattered. The authors now argue the reverse: passivity is the default response to long, uncontrollable stress, and what animals learn is control. In these experiments, animals that had once been able to control a stressor were less passive when a later one came. Most of this evidence comes from rats. Human evidence is limited, and the authors call the implications for depression treatment speculative. It suggests why small, visible wins might matter. It does not prove that an exercise will change you.

So start where you can see your effect quickly. A step you finish teaches you more than a plan you admire.

The waiting-list audit

This takes about 20 minutes to set up and 48 hours to finish.

1. Write down everything you are waiting on: at work, at home, with friends and in anything you want to make. Aim for at least five items.
2. Beside each one, write what you are waiting for. Permission? Information? Money? A better mood? The right moment? Someone else to go first?
3. Circle one item that matters to you and where the wait is not truly out of your hands.
4. Name the first step you control. It should take under 30 minutes and need nobody else to say yes before you start. Asking someone can be the step. Their answer is not.
5. Put the step in your calendar within the next 48 hours, then do it.
6. Write one line afterwards: what you did, what happened and what the next step is.

Notice what changed. Before, the film depended on things that might never arrive. After, it has a page, a test and a next step.

Examples of high agency in everyday life

Each example below is invented to show the shift. None is a story about a real person.

• Work. Before: you think the weekly meeting wastes an hour, and you complain about it afterwards. After: you write a three-point agenda and ask the person who runs the meeting whether you can try it next week.
• Friendship. Before: you miss an old friend and wait for them to get in touch. After: you send a message today suggesting two dates for coffee. They may say no. The asking was yours.
• Creative. Before: you plan to get back into music when life is calmer. After: you record a rough 60-second idea on your phone tonight.
• Home. Before: a dripping tap has annoyed you for a month. After: you ask your landlord in writing and suggest a date, or look up the part if the repair is yours to do.
• Career. Before: you want a promotion but do not know what it takes. After: you ask your manager what would need to be true for you to be considered, and write down the answer.

If you feel stuck in a whole week rather than one problem, how to get out of a rut helps you choose one change first.

Where agency stops

Real constraints. Money, time, health, disability, caring duties and legal status are real. Agency means choosing a step that works inside them, not pretending they are not there. A smaller step is still a step.

Other people's consent. Some high-agency writing uses slogans such as Mack's "bend reality", which can sound like permission to push past people. Acting on what you control includes asking clearly. It does not include overriding someone's no, ignoring a safety rule or making a decision that belongs to someone else.

Not a virtue on its own. Agency describes how you act, not whether the aim is any good. A 2026 New York Times guest essay by Sophie Haigney criticises the trend on these grounds: the label rewards boldness and momentum but, unlike courage, says nothing about the cause. Choose the aim with care, then act on it.

Structural barriers. Discrimination, the job market and the way institutions work are not solved by one person's attitude. Bandura's review names two other modes of agency for this: proxy agency, where you get someone with more influence to act for you, and collective agency, where people act together. Asking for help is a form of agency, not a failure of it.

Not a grade. A long waiting list is information about your situation. It is not a verdict on your character.

If the first step feels uncomfortable rather than unsafe, stepping out of your comfort zone covers how to stretch an act without making it risky.

Laurels is being built around this kind of step: you choose who you want to become, and it is planned to suggest a real-world challenge that fits where you are starting. The choice stays yours. It is not open yet. Until then, the who do you want to become guide takes you from a person you admire to an act you can try.