Elevator Pitch

• People often fail to fully address persistent problems in certain areas of their lives, mistaking effort or struggle for genuinely trying all available solutions.

Key Takeaways

• Agency is selective: capable people may act resourcefully in some life areas but remain stuck in others.
• Initial failures or low-capacity moments can freeze our approach to recurring problems, even as our capabilities grow.
• The feeling of effort or struggle does not guarantee that one is truly trying; real effort involves applying all available strategies and resources.

Most Memorable Quotes

• "People are not just high-agency or low-agency in a global sense, across their entire lives. Instead, people are selectively agentic."
• "The feeling of effort doesn’t mean that you’re Actually Trying."
• "It seems like, by default, you are stuck with whatever level of resourcefulness you brought to a problem the first time you encountered it and failed to fix it."