You Can Just Do Things.

A field guide to making shit happen.

If you could guarantee just one trait, one skill, one piece of someone’s personality that would be the highest, farthest, most undeniable indicator that they’ll make it in life, what would it be?

Intelligence? (Smart people figure things out, right?)

Hard work? Discipline? Grit? (Embracing the hustle culture and outworking everyone else.)

Honesty? Integrity? Character? Maybe. (Good people finish first, or so they say.)

Asking myself the same, I would say: It definitely isn’t any of this as you might have thought.

Why?

I know brilliant people who are broke and first-class graduates working jobs they hate, hence not intelligence.

I know hardworking people who’ve been grinding for ten years in the exact same spot, no closer to where they want to be (most of our parents fall in this category), hence it’s also not a hard-work problem.

And I know genuinely honest people obsessed with playing by the rules getting walked over by people who don’t give two f*cks about ethics, so honesty is also ruled out.

So what is it?

What separates the people who actually build the life they want from those who whine about the hands they are dealt?

What separates those who create their luck from those who wait for luck to find them (if it does…)?

What do the people living the dream life you want all have in common?

I will tell you…

Agency. High freaking agency.

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What the hell is Agency?

Well… There’s no textbook definition and I can’t give you a perfect one-size-fits-all answer of what agency is and isn’t because it’s not a single thing. It’s more of a posture toward life, a way of moving through the world. And it is very hard to define but easy to recognize.

Though, I will try my best to actually give a mental picture of what it is.

"You can be the master of your fate, the captain of your soul, but you need to realize that life is coming from you and not at you." -Timothée Chalamet

Life is coming from you. Not at you.

Hence, agency, according to Chalamet, is the ability to happen to life and not life happening to you.

Chalamet says: Play offense with life and not defense.

Or better still, let action come before reaction not after.

George Mack has a more pragmatic approach as to what agency is. He offers a thought experiment: “Who would be the first person you’d call if you were locked in a third world jail cell with only one phone call?”

Who came to mind aside your parents?

If any did then that person is the most Agentic person in your life right now. They have the utmost capacity to make things happen. You should be more like them. In fact, you should study them.

My definition is less elegant, a little bit crude and not as poetic as Chalamet’s, but useful: Can you turn shit into sugar? ASAP?

Can you make things happen?

Can you be resourceful without resources?

…you get the point.

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We all exist on a continuum:

Life happening to you ←――→ You happening to life

Naturally every human oscillates between these two extremes.

But people with high agency spend more of their time on the right than on the left, making them tend to default to action. They assume problems are solvable and it is their job to solve them. They accept reality for what it is and acknowledge that all they have is all they need.

You can spot them easily:

That friend you run to when everything’s falling apart? Agency.

The guy in your circle who shoots his shot the second he sees a girl he likes? Agency.

Your friend who wanted to learn the instrument but couldn’t afford lessons, so they YouTubed it, practiced for 6 months, and now they’re freaking good? Agency.

I think you now have a clear (or not so) clear picture of what agency is.

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So why would I say agency matters more than intelligence? Because real intelligence is agency in disguise.

I will explain…

Naval Ravikant defines intelligence as “The ability to get what you want out of life.”

If you want the girl, can you get the girl?

If you can, then you are intelligent. If you can’t, then you aren’t.

Intelligence is not the ability to ace tests or sound smart, and it’s definitely not the ability to regurgitate information. It’s just this: can you get what you want?

Hence by this standard, most people we call “intelligent” aren’t.

Oh, lest I forget…

IQ tests are bad approximates of intelligence. They only measure pattern recognition. They are useless at predicting who actually wins.

Hence, Naval’s definition of intelligence is just agency wearing a different name. An intelligent person is someone with high agency. Someone with high agency is an intelligent person. They’re the same thing viewed from different angles.

Now, that I have successfully bored you out with what agency is and looks like.

How do you actually build agency? How do you go from passenger to driver?

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Have Unrealistic Expectations From Life:

This might be the most counterintuitive advice you’ll hear, especially since, just like me, you’ve been told to “be realistic” more times than you can count.

But “being realistic” means: Accepting the default. Looking at what currently exists and deciding that’s the boundary of what’s possible. Capping your expectations at what you’ve seen other people achieve.

Heuristic 1: Realism is the death of agency.

“Be realistic” is how people who gave up on their dreams convince you to give up on yours.

The thing is: most things we call “unrealistic” are actually just hard. Or rare. Or something nobody’s figured out yet. which isn’t the same as impossible.

An imagination problem is what we have, not a reality problem.

Think about what’s actually impossible: flying like Iron Man (Marvel » DC), time travel, teleportation. All that shit is impossible, at least for now, because it violates the laws of physics.

But…

Most things you think are unrealistic aren’t impossible. They’re just outside the range of what you’ve seen people do. But that says more about the limitations of your reference points than the limitations of reality.

“Nobody’s done it before, therefore it’s impossible”? By that logic, everything that exists now was impossible until someone did it for the first time. Which means “impossible” is just a word people use for “I don’t know how to do this yet.”

And you can always be the first to figure things out.

Which exactly is where agency comes in:

Having “realistic” expectations is waiting for permission from reality to prove something is possible before you attempt it. That’s the opposite of agency. That’s letting life happen to you.

You should always have unrealistic expectations, because you’re betting on what could be rather than what is. And the most important part ? your aspirations become so big that they automatically drive you into action. They kick inertia in the face.

You stop asking “Is this possible?” and start asking “What do I need to do to make this possible?” That’s agency.

Plus, there’s far less competition in that space because everyone else already decided it was “unrealistic” and never started.

Adopt Elon’s rule: If it doesn’t violate the laws of physics, it’s possible.

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Understand That There Are No Adults:

Nobody knows what they’re doing.

Not your parents.

Not the guru on twitter with 500k followers.

Heck !

Not even me writing this. Nobody knows shit. We're all just trying things and seeing what happens(cause and effect). It’s not me being a cynic, I’m just saying the truth, and the truth is liberating once you accept it.

Understanding this, really understanding it, is fundamental to agency. Because agency requires rejecting the idea that someone else has the answers. It requires understanding that there’s no rule-book, no one path, no established way of doing things that actually guarantees results.

In the same light, when someone tells you something is impossible, doubt them with total skepticism. They don't actually know. They're just repeating what they were told or generalizing from their own limitations.

When someone qualified talks down your ambitions, understand what's actually happening. Your dreams threaten them. Your willingness to try something they were too scared to attempt makes them uncomfortable. in consequence they wish you failure because it justifies the risk they chose not to take.

This is why you need to kill your gurus. Shoot the warden. Stop believing that anyone has figured out the one true way to do things.

There is no one way. There’s no rule-book. There are only people who tried things and got results, and people who tried things and didn’t. so don’t let any one talk down on your dreams because they are supposed adults.

Heuristic 2 : Only take advice from people who are closer to your goals, not closer to you.

Your best friend doesn't know what you should do with your life just because they've known you since childhood. Your parents also don't know just because they raised you.

let’s talk about your parents a bit…

Your parents love you. I’m not questioning that. But they’re almost always wrong about what you should do with your life. They aren’t bad people. But they always want you safe. They want you doing something they understand even if it’s at your own detriment.

let’s frame it like this

“Your parents don’t want the best version of you, they want the version of you that serves them best.”

you should stick this up there, understand it to a deeper level , then take your parents' plan for your life and light it on fire.

You are not being a rebel, you are just trying to happen to life and not let life happen to you.

The best path is the one you create yourself.

So again…

Kill your gurus. Shoot the warden. free the prisoners, burn the cell. Stop looking for someone to tell you what to do.

Test things out yourself.

There are no adults. Everyone’s making it up. You might as well make things up in a direction that excites you.

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There’s only now

Pushing things to the future is pride.

Thinking you have more time when time isn’t guaranteed is pride

Betting on a tomorrow that you might not see is pride.

You're assuming the opportunity, the person, the moment will still be there when you finally decide to act.

You think you're special enough to get unlimited chances, unlimited tomorrows, unlimited opportunities to finally do the thing you keep not doing.

You're not that special. None of us are. Time isn't guaranteed.

You need to realize that There’s only now.

The future doesn’t exist yet. It’s a concept, a placeholder, a maybe. The past is a mental construct. Neither of them are real in the way this present moment is.

All you have is this moment. This liminal space in which you exist. This breath. This second. This choice. Now

And…

You only have a finite number of "nows." You don't know how many. Nobody does. You might die in fifty years or fifty days.

Heck ! could even be tomorrow. And thinking you'll always have more time is the worst heuristic you can adopt.

This understanding is fundamental to agency. Because agency exists only in the present moment.

What separates high agency people from the counterparts is that they don’t defer action until conditions are perfect they know conditions are never perfect.

They don’t wait until they feel ready because they know feeling ready often comes after starting, not before. They understand that the future is always, only, what you make of the present.

Your future self is just the accumulated result of what your present self does with each now. There’s no other mechanism.

If you like the girl, tell her now. If you want the dream, chase it now. You want to lose weight? Hit the gym now.

Every moment you delay is a moment you’re choosing inertia over agency. Every “I’ll do it later” is you letting life happen to you instead of you happening to life.

The past is gone. You can learn from it but you can’t change it. The future might not arrive. You can’t guarantee it. But you have this moment.

This single, irreplaceable moment.

What are you going to do with it?

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Do It For The Plot :

Imagine your life is a movie. An action movie, preferably. But you’re both the protagonist and the director. You get to script it and act it. Other people just get to watch.

Now ask yourself: why the hell wouldn’t you want your movie to be a blockbuster? Why wouldn’t you want it to sell out the cinemas?

would you even pay to watch your movie?

Would you tell your friends to see it? Would you re-watch it? Would you remember it a week after seeing it?

Most people act like they are extras in their movie. Minimal risk. Predictable outcomes. Nothing too dramatic. Just a quiet, forgettable movie that nobody will pay for.

But you're not most people. Or at least, you don't have to be.

The thing about agency is: it’s inherently dramatic.

Agentic people don’t just do things. They do things that make the plot interesting. They make choices that create stories worth telling.

Always do what the hero in the movie would do.

Fall in love with someone way out of your league. Write the book. Start the business. Get in the best shape of your life. Shoot your shot even when the odds are stacked against you.

Even if it doesn’t make sense. Even if it turns out to be the wrong decision. Do it for the plot.

Because there are no wrong decisions in a good story. There are only interesting ones and boring ones. And boring is the only real failure.

If it goes badly? You’ll at least have interesting stories to tell.

Random example: My guy asked out a girl way out of his league. He clearly knew she’d reject him. Her reply? “Kill the feelings.”

Brutal, right?

But when he told me the story, I had a good laugh. And so did he, eventually. Nothing was wasted. He became a more interesting character in his movie because of it.

Your life is a movie. You're the protagonist and the director.

Make it a blockbuster.

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‍This sounds bleak, but I need to say it:

In 75 years or less (might be tomorrow), you and I will both be dead. Gone. Covered up in dirt and sand. Almost no one will remember our names. The world will keep spinning like we were never here.

And that should give you the most invigorating sense of urgency you’ve ever felt.

Every stupid dream you’ve got? Chase it.

Every wild ambition that makes no sense? Chase it.

Even the dumb stuff. Especially the dumb stuff.

Because we’re all going to die sooner or later. That’s the one guarantee. The only question is: what are you going to do with the liminal moment of existence you have right now?

Will you play it safe? Will you spend your entire life waiting for permission?

Or will you suck the sap out of every single moment you’ve been given?

Time is of the essence. It’s always of the essence.

The girl you like? Tell her today.

The business you want to start? Start it today.

The person you want to become? Start becoming them today.

Not someday. Not when you’re ready. Not when conditions are perfect.

Today. Now. This moment.

Because agency is refusing to let your life happen without you. It’s about grabbing existence by the throat and saying, “I was here. I did things. I mattered.”

You don’t need permission. You don’t need a good plan. You don’t need to know how it all works out.

You just need to start.

The world is waiting for you to make your move. Stop waiting for it to make one first.

Chase it all. Chase it today. Chase it now.

—Abimbola.

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Hi Reader, I’m not a motivational speaker, not even close. I’m just obsessed with living an unconventional life and inspiring people to aim higher.

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