66. The Agent in Agency

I've seen several discussions online about personal agency and how it is learnable. Below are two tweets that advocate for the teachability of agency in their own ways. (You don't have to read their entire tweets. Just know they advocate that agency is teachable in their own ways.)

To me, having agency means asking "How can I fix it?" As Seymour Papert mentioned in his book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas,

"As mentioned earlier, one of the mainstays of the LOGO environment is the cluster of concepts related to "bugs" and "debugging." One does not expect anything to work at the first try. One does not judge by standards like "right--you get a good grade" and "wrong--you get a bad grade." Rather one asks the question: "How can I fix it?" and to fix it one has first to understand what happened in its own terms. "
(Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas)

Indeed, rarely do things work out the way we expected. Seymour used a programming language called LOGO to help children embody this idea, that they can fix things, but how could we as adults learn this idea today? Let’s break down the steps that lead to the idea that we can fix a problem.

Recognition of a Problem:

1. Is there a difference between reality and your expectations?
2. Assuming the answer is "yes," how are they different?

Acceptance of Responsibility:

1. Do you have a role in addressing this difference?
2. If yes, what role do you currently have?

Exploring and Expanding Roles:

1. Are there other roles available for you?
2. What other roles can you embody to address this difference?
3. Could the power or ability of your current role be expanded in some way?
4. How could the capability of your current role be expanded?

Recursive Loop:

Repeat the following until a role that believes it can solve the problem is embodied:

1. Now after the capability is expanded, are there other roles available for you?
2. What other roles can you embody to address this difference?
3. Could the power or ability of your current role be expanded in some way?
4. How could the capability of your current role be expanded?

Final Question for Action:

Once a role that believes in solving the problem is embodied, ask:

1. What steps can you take now to resolve the issue?

Even though some of these questions are binary yes/no questions, you don’t need to be certain of your answers. Feel free to guess and see where you end up. You are encouraged to use your imagination also. The goal is to find a promising position in your mind and move forward from there. Better yet, why don't you create your own algorithm to tackle problems and enhance your personal agency?

PS: here's a silly book I wrote related to agency