You wake up in a 3rd world jail cell. You’re only allowed to call one person you know to get you out of there. Who do you call?
My immediate thought was Rebeca Gállego Iglesias.
Rebeca has this ability to cut through all the noise and see exactly what needs to be done.
But when I went through the 10 traits listed under “How To Spot High Agency People”, I was pleasantly surprised.
- “Treadmill energy”: that’s Roberto Álvarez Alonso
- “Self-taught learning machine”: that’s also Roberto.
- “Quit something of prestige”: that’s definitely Roberto.
And the same for the other 7!
Roberto left his corporate job to build Documate and has this relentless energy that makes impossible things happen. How could I not join him in this amazing journey?
I’ve been obsessed with this concept of “high agency” for the last couple of months, since I discovered the essay and George Mack. It won’t be long before the term becomes mainstream and we see it everywhere. The concepts are nothing new, but the way he packaged them made something click in my brain.
High agency can be summarised in three key traits:
- Disagreeability
- Clear thinking
- Bias to action
And all of them are trainable!
I had been focused on increasing my bias to action for the past couple of years.
But reading this made me realise what I was missing: clear thinking.
Over the years, I’ve filled my brain with inputs: books, podcasts, blogs, and social networks. Procrastination by looking for another golden nugget of wisdom. “When I learn about X, I’ll finally be able to do Y”.
Becoming a walking Wikipedia of random facts feels great, but it’s less valuable since ChatGPT exists.
I wasn’t giving my brain enough space to process that information and produce more quality output.
Fewer inputs → Clear thinking → More action → More outputs
Look at me, I’m enjoying writing again!
When trying to apply the lessons learned from the High agency essay, I realised that such advice is easier to apply when you think of someone you know instead of remembering productivity tips or mental models.
Now, I filter decisions through a simple question: What would Roberto do? What would Rebeca do? They are not only two of the most knowledgeable people in the ServiceNow ecosystem, but they are also my compass for high agency thinking!
I always thought the key to success was surrounding yourself with intelligent people. But now I realise that’s not good enough. Those people should also be high agency!
Can you identify the person you’d call from jail? If not, maybe it’s time to find them!