keep logs of your efforts and outcomes; make the connection between them more salient
This will only work in the case where you are irrationally under-estimating the connection between your efforts and outcomes. It may be that you correctly estimate your actions often fail to lead to the desired outcomes.
I also wonder if a lack of agency itself is rational in some cases. Are people really less agentic than they ought to be, in general? I want to have more agency so I can accomplish X Y and Z. But is a lack of (increased) agency protecting me from instability and chaos that I couldn’t psychologically handle right now? Times when I had less agency, I also feel like I would have been able to handle chaos less. Maybe to increase agency, a person needs the psychological stability and safety to be able to survive a bunch of effortful, risky bets.
I imagine a failure mode where people “dream” about achieving X for a long time, but actually never do any specific steps towards it. Or worse: they do a specific step, but only a little one.
So their conclusion is “despite wanting X and actually working to achieve it, I failed”.
With logs, this could change to “after spending 20 minutes trying to achieve X, nothing”—which suggests the alternative interpretation that 20 minutes is obviously not enough.
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I agree that lack of agency can protect your slack. Probably also protect you from people who think you are too much active for your status.
This will only work in the case where you are irrationally under-estimating the connection between your efforts and outcomes. It may be that you correctly estimate your actions often fail to lead to the desired outcomes.
I also wonder if a lack of agency itself is rational in some cases. Are people really less agentic than they ought to be, in general? I want to have more agency so I can accomplish X Y and Z. But is a lack of (increased) agency protecting me from instability and chaos that I couldn’t psychologically handle right now? Times when I had less agency, I also feel like I would have been able to handle chaos less. Maybe to increase agency, a person needs the psychological stability and safety to be able to survive a bunch of effortful, risky bets.
I imagine a failure mode where people “dream” about achieving X for a long time, but actually never do any specific steps towards it. Or worse: they do a specific step, but only a little one.
So their conclusion is “despite wanting X and actually working to achieve it, I failed”.
With logs, this could change to “after spending 20 minutes trying to achieve X, nothing”—which suggests the alternative interpretation that 20 minutes is obviously not enough.
.
I agree that lack of agency can protect your slack. Probably also protect you from people who think you are too much active for your status.