She means being proactive. If you want something to happen, you do it, or you make it happen however you can.
For example, there’s a local meetup group that we’ve had a couple meetings of—but we don’t have a schedule, we only have meetings when someone is proactive—they say “I’ve found the meeting place, the activity, I’ve emailed the people, come by, I will certainly be there, I will make sure we have a good time no matter how many people show up.” And then we have a meetup.
I’m reminded of the line from The Caine Mutiny that naval ships were designed by geniuses to be run by idiots. If you want to do something, you can either design the ship, or you can just run an existing ship. If we had schedules and a book full of activities and a large group on a mailing list, someone with all the proactiveness of a bag of rocks could make meetups happen. But we don’t have those things, so nothing happens unless someone is feeling “agent-ey.”
If we had schedules and a book full of activities and a large group on a mailing list, someone with all the proactiveness of a bag of rocks could make meetups happen. But we don’t have those things, so nothing happens unless someone is feeling “agent-ey.”
This suggests that the way to systematically make things happen is not to organize meetings, but to put in place such a system (schedules, book full of etc.) for organizing meetings. Otherwise you need someone to feel “agent-ey” every time; that doesn’t seem sustainable.
Edit: That is, if you’re a person in such a group and you’re feeling “agent-ey”, Manfred’s comment suggests that your efforts would be better spent putting a system in place that would allow things to happen without any agentness involved, as opposed to putting forth the effort to make a thing happen this one time. I’m not sure if my experience supports this; I’ll have to think about it.
This mirrors my own experience—the way I’ve found to have the most influence, and get the most done is often not being the one completing the tasks, but rather the one creating and documenting the process/procedures, and teaching and training other people to do the work.
It’s also far more lucrative from a career standpoint! :D
PC refers to “player character.” In many games, there would be many characters, most of which don’t have goals and function primarily as scenery, and PCs, who both have goals and move heaven and earth to achieve those goals.
As for “agentiness,” I think a similar term is executive-nature. They’re an entity that can be well modeled by having goals, planning to achieve those goals, and achieving those goals. Many people just react to life; agents act.
Ah, thank you. I’m quite familiar with the term, and with the PC/NPC distinction in games; I just didn’t make the connection in this context. So the idea here is that most people don’t have goals? Or have goals, but don’t act to further them?
Perhaps I missed some previous required-reading, but… what exactly do you mean by “agenty”, “agentiness”, etc.?
(Also, what does “PC” refer to in this context?)
Edit: This?
She means being proactive. If you want something to happen, you do it, or you make it happen however you can.
For example, there’s a local meetup group that we’ve had a couple meetings of—but we don’t have a schedule, we only have meetings when someone is proactive—they say “I’ve found the meeting place, the activity, I’ve emailed the people, come by, I will certainly be there, I will make sure we have a good time no matter how many people show up.” And then we have a meetup.
I’m reminded of the line from The Caine Mutiny that naval ships were designed by geniuses to be run by idiots. If you want to do something, you can either design the ship, or you can just run an existing ship. If we had schedules and a book full of activities and a large group on a mailing list, someone with all the proactiveness of a bag of rocks could make meetups happen. But we don’t have those things, so nothing happens unless someone is feeling “agent-ey.”
This suggests that the way to systematically make things happen is not to organize meetings, but to put in place such a system (schedules, book full of etc.) for organizing meetings. Otherwise you need someone to feel “agent-ey” every time; that doesn’t seem sustainable.
Edit: That is, if you’re a person in such a group and you’re feeling “agent-ey”, Manfred’s comment suggests that your efforts would be better spent putting a system in place that would allow things to happen without any agentness involved, as opposed to putting forth the effort to make a thing happen this one time. I’m not sure if my experience supports this; I’ll have to think about it.
The big choke-point then being item #3 - getting a large group :P
This mirrors my own experience—the way I’ve found to have the most influence, and get the most done is often not being the one completing the tasks, but rather the one creating and documenting the process/procedures, and teaching and training other people to do the work.
It’s also far more lucrative from a career standpoint! :D
PC refers to “player character.” In many games, there would be many characters, most of which don’t have goals and function primarily as scenery, and PCs, who both have goals and move heaven and earth to achieve those goals.
As for “agentiness,” I think a similar term is executive-nature. They’re an entity that can be well modeled by having goals, planning to achieve those goals, and achieving those goals. Many people just react to life; agents act.
Ah, thank you. I’m quite familiar with the term, and with the PC/NPC distinction in games; I just didn’t make the connection in this context. So the idea here is that most people don’t have goals? Or have goals, but don’t act to further them?
See “Humans are not automatically strategic”.
PC refers to “player character”: http://meaningandmagic.com/pc-laws-of-life/