anti-passive living

When we think about the word agency, a huge world of ideas comes to mind. But if we're trying to take full, relentless control of our lives, where do we actually start? First, we have to accept a frustrating truth: a lot of life is completely outside our control. Bad drivers. The flu. Your boss. The economy. The rain on your wedding day or the free ride when you're already late. Thanks for nothing, Alanis.

“You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Life is going to happen to you whether you like it or not. Agency isn't pretending otherwise. It's deciding what you're going to do with what happens.That led me to four pillars:

Four levers. That's it. You don't control the world, but you can do a hell of a lot with those four things.

What about goals? Goals aren't a domain of agency.

They're an expression of it.

The same is true of money, relationships, career, purpose, environment, and habits. Those aren't separate pillars. They're areas of life where the four pillars get applied.

Take your career. Your Body determines your energy and capacity. Your Mind determines your skills and judgment. Your Time determines where you put your effort. Your Standards determine what kind of work you'll accept.

Relationships work the same way. Your body affects your presence and energy. Your mind governs your emotional control and judgment. Your time determines how much attention you actually give someone. Your standards determine the boundaries you maintain.

Money? Same framework. Your capacity to earn, your financial judgment, where you allocate your time, and the standards you set around spending all matter.

That's how you know the framework is useful: the pillars explain the mechanism rather than simply giving you a list of things to improve.

So, in its simplest form: Body is capacity. Mind is judgment. Time is allocation. Standards are thresholds. Let's break them down. 

Body is capacity.
Your body is the machine you're driving through this whole ridiculous adventure. Take care of it. Sleep. Move. Get stronger. Eat reasonably well. Get outside. Don't treat your body like a rental car you intend to return with the check-engine light blinking and half a tank of gas. You don't need six-pack abs, nor do you need to become a monk who eats nothing but elk and fermented cabbage. You need enough physical capacity to do the things you want your life to contain. Because everything gets harder when you're exhausted, weak, sick, sedentary, and running on gas-station nachos. Your body doesn't determine everything about your life, but it determines a hell of a lot about what you're capable of doing with it.

Mind is judgment. 
This is where the fight gets more interesting. Something happens. Your brain immediately tells you what it means."This sucks." Maybe it does."This always happens to me."Probably not."There's nothing I can do." Now we're getting into dangerous territory.

The Stoics understood something that modern life has somehow managed to make both incredibly obvious and incredibly difficult: an event happens, you interpret it, and then you decide what to do about it.You don't control the first part. You have considerably more control over the second and third.Your mind is your interpretation engine. Train it.Learn to distinguish between what happened and the story you're telling yourself about what happened. Those are rarely the same thing.You can't control every thought that enters your head. But you can become much better at deciding which thoughts deserve your attention, which deserve to be challenged, and which deserve to be ignored.

Time is allocation.
Here's the depressing one.You have exactly 24 hours today. Not 26. Not 31 because you're really busy. Twenty-four.And every hour you spend somewhere is an hour you can't spend somewhere else.That's not productivity advice.That's mortality.You're literally spending your life. Yet we talk about "killing time" as if we're not the ones getting killed. Time is the only resource you can't make more of, but you can choose how to use is more efficiently. Your calendar is one of the most honest descriptions of your priorities you'll ever create. You can tell people your family is your highest priority. You can tell them your health matters. You can tell them you're building a business. Show me your calendar, and I'll show you what you actually believe.Time is the one resource you cannot earn back. You can make more money. You can rebuild your strength. You can repair a relationship. But yesterday's two hours are gone forever. Spend them accordingly. 

Be ruthless, intentional, and violent with your time. Don't let others steal it. And don't waste it doing a bunch of worthless bullshit. Many of us say "I have to do this. I don't have a choice." Everyone has a choice. That's agency. 

Standards are Thresholds
And then there's Standards. This is where self-improvement gets uncomfortable.Your standards aren't about what you want. They're about what you're willing to tolerate.

That's a very different question. Everyone wants to be fit. Everyone wants more money, a great marriage, meaningful work, confidence, discipline, respect, success, and enough free time to watch three seasons of a Netflix show on Tuesday night.

Wanting something is easy. The harder question is: What are you willing to stop accepting in order to get it?

That's standards.

Sometimes the problem isn't that you don't know what to do. You know you should exercise. You know you should save money. You know you should have the conversation, call your dad, apologize, quit the job, or stop drinking so much.

Knowing isn't the problem. The problem is that the consequences of changing still feel worse than the consequences of staying the same. A standard changes that calculation. A standard says: This is no longer acceptable.

And once something becomes unacceptable, you stop asking whether change is convenient. You start figuring out how to make it happen.

That's where agency becomes action.

Violence, in this context, doesn't mean aggression toward another person. It means forceful disruption, a sudden departure from what was. A violent break doesn't politely ask the old pattern if it's ready to end. Sometimes your life needs that. Not because you're angry.

Because you're done.

Done negotiating. Done rationalizing. Done waiting for motivation. Done hoping circumstances will magically become different (they won't). Done telling yourself that someday you'll get around to it. You don't need to destroy your life. You need to interrupt the pattern that's keeping you from living it.

That's Violent Agency.

Not:"I control everything."That's bullshit. Instead: "I am responsible for what I can control." My body. My mind. My time. My standards.

And when those four things aren't aligned with the life I want, I don't sit around waiting for the world to change.

I change what I can. And then I see what happens.