In one sentence
Agency is developed by repeatedly choosing actions that expand your control over outcomes: pursue neglected edges, ask despite likely rejection, learn publicly, seek useful feedback, and preserve the energy required for creative action.
Overview
Hall rejects the idea that people are simply born agentic or passive. She defines agency as a “manifest determination to make things happen” and attributes her accomplishments across law, poker, entrepreneurship, and medicine partly to deliberately increasing it. Her approach is not merely to work harder, but to identify opportunities most people avoid because they are uncomfortable, socially awkward, tedious, or obscured by fear. She presents six practices: court rejection, seek real feedback, increase your surface area for luck, assume traits are learnable, cross the moat of low status, and avoid overwork. The final point is paradoxical but central: burnout reduces agency by making people dismiss possibilities before exploring them.
Core ideas
Find neglected edges
In competitive environments, advantage may come less from working harder than everyone else and more from doing something others dismiss or avoid. Hall’s poker example is studying physical tells while other players focused on increasingly refined mathematical strategies. Look for valuable activities hidden behind aversion, inconvenience, or social disbelief.
Court rejection
Ask for opportunities that feel unreasonably ambitious, including jobs or collaborations you probably will not get. Deliberate exposure to rejection weakens the link between “no,” surprise, and discouragement. If you only request things you are likely to receive, your requests may be too conservative.
Seek feedback that is actually honest
Improvement requires information about how others experience you, not merely self-assessment. Make feedback easy and socially safe to give; anonymity can reduce the interpersonal pressure that produces politeness. Most feedback may be trivial, but occasional painful observations can reveal high-value weaknesses.
Increase your surface area for luck
Meet more people and pursue conversations without requiring an obvious short-term payoff. Relevance is easier to predict than usefulness, but it is a poor substitute for it: unexpected collaborators, ideas, and opportunities often emerge from apparently random encounters.
Treat traits as learnable
Agency, confidence, charisma, warmth, tranquility, and optimism may be more malleable than people assume. Replace the question “Do I have this trait?” with “What would I practice, study, observe, and imitate to develop it?” The belief that a trait is fixed can prevent experimentation before it begins.
Cross the moat of low status
Entering a new field involves a period of visible incompetence: asking basic questions, making mistakes, and not knowing what others take for granted. This “moat” protects the advantage held by people willing to cross it. Avoiding embarrassment may preserve status, but it also blocks feedback, collaboration, and learning.
Protect agency by avoiding burnout
More hours do not reliably produce more valuable work; excessive grinding can undermine creativity and big-picture judgment. Hall treats declining agency—prematurely ruling out ideas or actions—as an early burnout signal. Firm boundaries and genuine rest are therefore not indulgences but conditions for continued initiative.
Agency is a general-purpose life skill
The same capacity can be applied to work, relationships, aesthetics, and other domains. Agency is not total control over circumstances; it is the willingness and ability to search for actions that make reality more aligned with one’s aims.
Practical takeaways
- List three opportunities you have not pursued because they seem too ambitious, awkward, or unlikely; apply for or ask about one.
- Create a recurring channel for candid feedback from people who know your work or behavior well.
- Schedule several exploratory conversations based on broad interest rather than immediate usefulness.
- Choose one trait you regard as fixed and design a small learning experiment around it: study exemplars, imitate specific behaviors, and request feedback.
- When entering a new domain, deliberately ask basic questions and make early attempts instead of waiting until you can appear competent.
- Track loss of initiative, creativity, or willingness to test ideas as possible signs of overwork; establish stopping times before those signs appear.
- Search for the neglected edge in your current environment: an important task, source of information, or relationship others avoid because it is tedious or uncomfortable.
Caveats and counterpoints
- The article is a personal essay, not a systematic account of agency or a universally tested program. Hall’s unusually high tolerance for risk, rejection, and experimentation may not transfer directly to every person or circumstance.
- “Ask for unreasonable things” needs judgment: repeated overreach can damage trust, and power differences, financial constraints, health, or family responsibilities can make rejection more costly.
- Anonymous feedback can produce useful candor, but it can also be vague, biased, or abusive; feedback should be checked against patterns and specific observations.
- Expanding one’s network increases exposure to opportunity but consumes time and can become indiscriminate socializing. The value depends on follow-up and discernment.
- Assuming traits are learnable is empowering, but not every constraint is equally malleable. Structural conditions, temperament, disability, resources, and other people’s choices still limit control.
- Rest protects agency for many people, but the appropriate workload and boundaries vary by role, season, and obligation; the essay’s strict practices are examples, not prescriptions.
Questions worth revisiting
- Where am I mistaking social discomfort or fear of embarrassment for an objective constraint?
- What valuable activity in my environment is being ignored because it is tedious, awkward, or difficult to evaluate?
- Which rejection would teach me something while imposing an acceptable cost?
- What feedback about me might people be withholding because it is uncomfortable to say directly?
- Am I optimizing for relevance instead of usefulness when choosing conversations or projects?
- Which new skill or domain am I avoiding because I want to appear competent immediately?
- What changes in my behavior signal that overwork is reducing my agency?
Return to this when…
Return when you are being overly cautious about asking, waiting for confidence before acting, dismissing a skill as innate, or confusing exhaustion with commitment. The article is especially useful before a career transition, ambitious application, new collaboration, or deliberate reset of work boundaries.