Agency is more valuable than intelligence and represents your ability to take initiative, make decisions, and control your actions rather than feeling like a passenger in your own life.

High agency people:

• Have an 'I'll figure it out' attitude
• Maintain a tight thinking-to-doing loop
• Actively shape their lives

Low agency individuals:

• Wait for external forces like luck or circumstances
• Feel like passengers in their own lives
• Have an external locus of control

Contrary to popular belief, high agency is a trainable skill, not an inborn trait. For 200 years, our systems were designed to condition people for low agency behavior, with only royalty and executives trained for high agency.

The current information age makes personal judgment and agency more crucial than ever, requiring us to unlearn conditioned behaviors and develop the belief that we can figure things out.