Things You're Allowed To Do has dozens of these
From my personal list:
There's a very useful set of intellectual gestures here:
I sum it up as "YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING. HUMANS USE TOOLS".
My examples are small, and you might not think all of them count, but here are some things I've done that sound kind of like what you're asking for:
When learning rope splicing, I wanted a fid. Fids online were more expensive than I wanted to buy for a potentially brief interest, so I thought hard about what they actually do (make space between strands of rope with the pointy end, lead the rope through that space with the hollow end) and made a thing that does that by taping a chopstick to a drinking straw. The other thing a fid does is measure a certain multiple of the rope's diameter, but that was easily solved by drawing a mark on the homemade tool at the correct distance from the end.
I used to think that you had to buy the clothes you wanted already made, but I've gradually gotten better at deciding what I want and then either modifying something to be it or making it from scratch. I frequently modify patterns so that things have more pockets than they're supposed to. Did you know that you can add or enlarge pockets without sewing at all? Get the strongest fusible interfacing you can find, put it where the seams should go, and press [iron] it in place. Seams glued like this aren't as strong as sewn ones, but some people are needlessly intimidated by the concept of learning to thread a needle, knot the thread, and put it in and out of a couple layers of fabric a few times.
Depending on your cultural background, it may be more agentic to DIY household projects that others would hire someone for, or it may be more agentic to hire a contractor to do stuff which others would either DIY or leave un-done.
In my house, there was a doorway between the kitchen/dining space and laundry room. I disliked having an open doorway there because the washing machine and dryer are loud, but for a long time I assumed that was just how things had to be. Eventually I realized that I could just go buy a pre-hung door the right size and install it, which I did and am very glad of. (try Habitat For Humanity first for pre-hung doors, and factor a trim kit for both sides into the total cost of the project, if you're doing this)
I've built a lot of custom bookshelves over the years. You really don't have to be much of a carpenter; as long as you pick nice enough materials that they're not leaking pitch or giving you splinters, and you assemble it well enough to not fall down, it'll do the job. I'm also not shy about cutting holes in the backs of bookshelves when they would otherwise block an electrical outlet or something else small but important.
I'd argue that it's agentic in a potentially harmful way to uninstall smoke detectors when they annoy you sufficiently. If you're having that problem, replace the ion ones with photoelectric ones. There's a Technology Connections video on youtube explaining it if you want more info there.
Thanks! These kind of things are what I'm looking for. I appreciate the maker perspective.
I've fixed multiple appliances with some good old copper wire (dishwasher and toilet).
Similarly:
In airports (LAX comes to mind), sometimes you can get outdoors after security by visiting the smoking area! I don't smoke; I just like fresh air and sunlight. But sometimes the "smoking area" is the best place to get that.
You might like social engineering content. I have occasionally bluffed my way past security personnel to get things done, and even (when highly confident that they were incorrect) ignored them saying "you can't go there" while obviously making no attempt to stop me, just to see what would happen. They did not stop me, nor summon anyone to remove me from the area where they claimed I "couldn't" be.
It's highly agentic but probably immoral by most standards to abuse return policies and use places with generous policies as cheap or free rental options.
Identifying and exploiting certain personal finance loopholes may count: Compare spending HSA funds with the provided debit card to making the same purchases on a credit card, reimbursing them from the HSA, and keeping the rewards or sign-up bonus from the credit card company.
Did you know you can go buy a massage chair, which pretty much looks like a regular chair, for a few hundred bucks? Gues
here are some specific, random, generally small things that i do quite often:
here are some more general mental TAPs that i've accidentally burned into my brain:
Non-action is a ubiquitous option that is often overlooked. It can be very powerful.
For example, if someone asks you a question, it's natural to immediately start searching for the best words to say in response. The search may feel especially desperate if it seems like there is nothing you can say that would be true and useful. An ace-up-the-sleeve is to be silent. No one can force you to act or speak, and a rare, minor social faux pas is forgotten surprisingly fast.
A friend:
"Do I look fat in this dress?"
Smiles. [commence silent mode]
A police officer:
"Ok for me to search your car? What are you doing here?"
"I'm happy to comply if you have a warrant. I'll need to consult with my attorney before answering any further questions." [commence silent mode]
A serial killer:
"Which of your children shall I murder?!"
[commence silent mode]
(I pay little attention to threatening people, regardless of what they say or do, and the outcome is usually the best I could hope for.)
I think a lot of things that go under the category of agency are a collection of other things. Usually they involve higher task saliency in the face of distraction. This leads to a bunch of downstream effects that look like agency, eg not stopping when existing options don't work but instead investigating creating new options.
I've been thinking about agency recently. I want to be more agentic!
Sometime last year, I read Cultivating And Destroying Agency and Seven ways to become unstoppably agentic. I recently saw How to be More Agentic and it kind of spurred me to write this post (which is actually a form of agency). I credit these posts with expanding what I think is possible. What I found really helpful was the concrete examples of the things they did (you can just buy stuff online, you can cold email people, try to get as many rejections as possible, sign up to take a test w/o taking a class).
These examples felt really helpful because they expanded the domain of things I thought were possible. I want to expand my agency Overton window.
My model is that there are two parts to expanding agency:
If you have examples of things that you have done are just totally orthogonal to what we think of normal, that were ultimately helpful (or not), please put them here. This will hopefully help with step 1. Actually Doing Things and getting a positive feedback loop requires effort (but it hopefully is fun and rewarding).
If what you did ended really badly, please still put it, but just also put that it ended badly. I can reverse advice. If it ended well, say that also! The more examples the better. My main goal is to expand my possibility hull (pictured above). If you are unsure whether the thing you are saying is already known, please say it anyways.