Preserve Your Agency｜Naval

Let's talk about one more tweet, which...

I liked when I first saw it or I might have retweeted it.

I think people retweet things when they see something that they haven't figured out how to say yet. but they knew in their head, but it's just implicit.

It hadn't been made explicit. I think that's when people are like, I need to retweet this.

So this one was... January 17, blame yourself for everything and preserve your agency.

From my end, it's like take responsibility for everything and in the process of taking responsibility for something.

You create and preserve the agency to go solve that problem.

If you're not responsible for the problem, there's no way for you to fix the problem.

Just to address your point of how it was something you already knew but phrased in a way that you liked...

Emerson did this all the time. He would phrase things in a beautiful way and you would say, oh, that's exactly what I was thinking and feeling but I didn't know how to articulate it.

And the way he put it was he said, in every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts. they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

And I just love that line. What I try to do with Twitter, which is I try to say something true, but in an interesting way.

And not only just true and interesting way to say it, but also it has to be something that really has emotional heft behind it.

It has to have struck me recently and been important to me.

Otherwise, I'm just faking it. I don't sit around trying to think up tweets to write.

It's more that something happens to me, something affects me emotionally.

And then I synthesize it in a certain way.

I test it. I'm like, is this true? And if I feel like it's true or mostly true or true in the context that I care about. and if I can say it in some way that'll help me stick in my mind, then I just send it out there.

And it's nothing new for the people who get it.

If it's not said in an interesting way, then it's a cliche. or if they've heard it too much, it's a cliche.

But if it's said in an interesting way, then it may remind them of something that was in or it might convert their specific knowledge or it might be a hook for converting, their specific knowledge into more general knowledge in their own minds.

So I find that process useful for myself and hopefully others do too.

Now, for the specific tweet, I just noticed this tendency where people are very cynical.

And they'll say all the wealth is stolen, for example, by banksters and the like or crony capitalists or what have you, or just outright thieves. are oligarchs.

You can't rise up in this world if you're X. You can't rise up in this world if you're a poor kid.

You can't rise up in this world if you are from this race or ethnicity, if you were born in that country, or if you're lame or crippled or blind or what have you.

And the problem with this is that yes, there are real hindrances in the world.

It is not a level playing field, and fair is something that only exists in a child's imagination. and cannot be pinned down in any real way.

But the world is not entirely luck. In fact, you know that because in your own life, There are things that you have done that have led to good outcomes.

And you know that if you had not done that thing, it would not have led to that good outcome.

So you can absolutely move the needle. And it's not all luck.

And especially the longer the timeframe you're talking about. the more intense the activity, the more iteration you take and the more thinking and choice you apply into it the less luck matters it recedes into the distance To give you a simple example, which most people won't love because they're not in Silicon Valley, but Every brilliant person I met in Silicon Valley 20 years ago, every single one, the young brilliant ones,

Every single one is successful. Every single one.

I cannot think of an exception. I should have gone back and just indexed them all based on their brilliance.

By the way, that's what Y combinator does at scale, right?

What a great mechanism. So it works. If people stick at it for 20 years, it works.

Now you might say, easy for you to say, man, that's for the people in Silicon Valley.

No one was born here. They all moved here. they moved here because they wanted to be where the other smart kids were and because they wanted to be high agency.

So agency does work. But if you're keeping track of the time period, you're going to be disappointed.

You'll give up too soon. So you need a higher motivator.

That's why Elon goes to Mars and that's why Sam wants to invent AGI and that's why...

Steve Jobs wanted to build, 50 years ago in the 80s, he was talking about building a computer that would fit in a book.

He was talking about the iPad. So it's these very long visions that sustain you over the long periods of time to actually build the thing you want to and get to where you want to get.

So a cynical belief is self-fulfilling. A pessimistic belief is like you're driving the motorcycle, but you're looking at the brick wall that you're supposed to turn away from. you will turn into the brick wall without even realizing it.

So you have to preserve your agency. you're born with agency children are high agency they go get what they want if they want something they see it they go get it You have to preserve your agency.

You have to preserve your belief that you can change things.

[主動權的哲學：為何「責怪自己」是通往自由的關鍵]-[Preserve Your Agency]

📋 Summary

轉發的本質：將隱性知識顯性化

「責怪自己」：維護主動權（Agency）的核心

破除犬儒主義：運氣與努力的辯證

長期主義與願景的重要性

結語：守護內在的驅動力

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript