How to be more agentic
why most of your problems can be solved in a 1hr whiteboarding session with a friend

by Daniel Kazandjian

Today's Structure

1

Presentation + Q&A (20min)

2

Mastermind Session (30min)

3

Emergent Group Time (remainder)
Why should you listen to me?
  • Behavioural science background
  • Founder Coach
  • Host of The Metagame
Q: How would you define agency?
Wtf even is agency?
Know it when you see it
Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Blake Scholl
Key Aspects
Self-determination, proactivity, internal locus of control, capacity to do new things, "Live" vs "Dead Player"
Why does it matter?
Global power boost across everything you're doing
Why does it matter now?
Agency is increasingly relevant when you’re no longer bottlenecked on intelligence/engineering/capital
Elements of Agency
First Principles Reasoning
Radical Responsibility
Some Other Trainable Skills
🧱 Reasoning from First Principles
🧱Reasoning from First Principles
Story: Getting rockets to from Texas to Florida
Can't because overpasses
Elon Takeaways
  • "Physics are the only laws, everything else is a suggestion"
  • Resilience to the herd (high disagreeableness, autism)
  • Falling in love with problem solving
đź’Š Bitter Pill: Radical Responsibility
AKA
  • extreme ownership
  • internal locus of control
  • TLDR: better to have false positives than false negatives when it comes to responsibility.
Q: What are some examples of where you took responsibility (or didn't)?
🎹 Agency is a Skill

1

Whiteboarding with a friend
Reasoning, morale, frame-breaking

2

Compendium of Other Techniques
GTD, 3 Column Exercise, Reverse Planning, Socratic Dialogue, etc…
Why whiteboarding?
most of your problems can be solved in a 1hr whiteboarding session with a good friend
  • A sandbox for taking responsibility for your problem
  • Trains 1st principles reasoning and frame-breaking
  • 1hr gives you enough time to get stuck and unstuck
  • Friends give: morale, opponent processing, Solomon Effect
Steve Jobs on Whiteboarding (and "source")
Q: What converts ideas into actions?
But how? Let's Practice ✍️
Identify a Problem
Someone share a challenge you're facing 🙋🏻‍♀️
Craft a Statement
Define the problem clearly
Whiteboard Possible Solutions
  • First principles
  • Diverge <> Converge
  • Make a decision
Thank You
  • @dkazand on Twitter (dms open)
  • www.dkazand.com
Workshop Bonuses ➡️
Appendix
Cool stuff that didn't make it into the talk
  • What’s upstream of all of this?
  • People like Elon or Mr Beast never needed this talk. What’s different about them?
  • “Desire wants what it wants.”
  • Working with Source (Peter Koenig)
  • Well-crafted 30 day challenges
  • Most of the advice is good and there and will change your life if you apply it for the length of time required.
  • But — most people don’t do things long enough for states to become traits
  • Simple answer: well-crafted 30 day challenges (didn’t fit into the presentation so I created a notion page for this)​
Made with Gamma