The Importance of Agency: What Separates Those Who Shape the World from Those Who Only React to It?

Two colleagues graduated from the same department, took the same course, and hold the same degree.

Two years later, one of them is still waiting for someone to tell him the next step.

The other has built himself a small path, step by step, without waiting for a complete map.

The difference between them isn’t a single factor, of course. It isn’t intelligence alone, and it isn’t luck alone.

But there’s one key ingredient psychologists call agency: the sense that you’re an actor, not just a receiver.

This isn’t about programming or marketing in themselves. Those are tools, and their value shifts over time, especially in the age of AI.

The value isn’t in the tool. It’s in the person using it.

But What Is Agency, Really?

In philosophy, an agent is a being with the capacity to act, and agency is the exercise of that capacity. What’s meant here is intentional action: moving for a reason you know, not being pushed.

Psychologist Albert Bandura, one of the most prominent writers on the concept, defines agency as a person’s ability to influence the nature and quality of their life. Among its core features, he lists:

• Intentionality: having a goal you’re moving toward.
• Forethought: anticipating outcomes and planning for them.
• Self-regulation: steering your behavior toward what you’ve decided.
• Self-reflection: examining your abilities, what you do, and why you do it.

Notice that none of these is a technical skill.

Agency is a state of mind: deciding to walk toward a goal, even if you don’t have all the answers.

It isn’t blind impulse, and it isn’t a rejection of systems. It’s initiative that starts with you.

Why Did We Learn to Wait?

Many of us were raised on compliance: wait for instructions, and follow the path laid out for you.

That isn’t wrong in itself. Commitment and order are real values.

But today’s world changes fast, and those who take the initiative often move ahead faster than those who wait.

And here’s a fascinating scientific story. In the 1960s, researchers Steven Maier and Martin Seligman noticed that animals exposed to stress they couldn’t control later stopped trying to escape, even when escape became possible. They called it learned helplessness.

But after decades of brain research, Maier and his colleagues arrived at the opposite reading: passivity isn’t something we learn. It’s the default response to prolonged stress. What we actually learn is that we have control, and that learning switches on circuits in the prefrontal cortex that hold that response back.

These are animal studies, and we can’t apply them to humans literally. But the idea is inspiring: agency isn’t something you’re born with or lose forever. It’s built through experience, through small moments that prove to you that what you do makes a difference.

What Does Agency Look Like in Everyday Life?

An employee at a company noticed that customers were asking the same questions every day. Instead of complaining about the repetition, she wrote a short one-page guide and showed it to her manager. No one had asked her to.

And two graduates have been waiting for a government job for two years. Their waiting is understandable, and hope is their right.

But one of them decided to learn accounting software in the evenings, and started taking on small jobs for shops in his neighborhood.

He didn’t give up on waiting, but he didn’t make it his only plan.

And here’s the deeper difference: an agentic person doesn’t define themselves by a tool: “I’m a programmer,” “I’m a marketer.”

They define themselves by a way of thinking: “I have a goal, and I’ll learn whatever gets me there.”

What Does the Research Say?

In organizational psychology, there’s a related concept called proactive personality, which researchers Bateman and Crant described in 1993 as a stable tendency to take action to influence one’s environment.

And in an analysis pooling data from more than 100,000 employees, published in 2022, proactivity was linked to career success, but to different degrees: its link with subjective career satisfaction was moderate, while its link with salary and promotion was weak.

That’s an honest reading of the topic: initiative helps, but it isn’t a magic wand.

And interestingly, part of its effect ran through helping colleagues and contributing beyond the limits of the job. A true agent doesn’t move forward alone. They move the people around them.

And What About AI?

AI answers questions, writes, and analyzes.

But it doesn’t, at least so far, have intentions of its own. It doesn’t wake up wanting something.

You, on the other hand, have the goal, the decision, and the responsibility.

That’s why, as the tools grow more powerful, the question “What do I want to do with them?” matters more than “How do I use them?”

The Common Misconception About Agency

• It isn’t “everything is in your hands”: Bandura says people are producers of social systems as much as they are products of them. Circumstances are real, and agency means moving within them, not denying them.
• It isn’t rebellion: Taking initiative doesn’t mean breaking the rules. It means adding something of your own within them.
• It isn’t necessarily individual: Bandura distinguishes between personal agency, “proxy” agency when you enlist someone who has the ability, and collective agency when people work together. Asking for help is an act of agency too.
• It isn’t beating yourself up: If you haven’t made a move yet, that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It just means the first step hasn’t come yet.

How Do You Practice Agency?

1. Rewrite your identity sentence: Define yourself by what you solve, not by the tool you use. Example: from “I’m a designer” to “I help small shops look better.”
2. One goal, and one step within 48 hours: Don’t wait for the complete plan. Example: “I want a job in marketing,” and the step: I’ll message three people who work in it and ask them one question.
3. Ask: What’s in my hands?: Pick a situation where you’re stuck, and write down one thing you can do about it. Example: I can’t change my manager, but I can ask him to clarify priorities.
4. Collect small evidence of control: Every evening, write down one thing you did that changed something, however small. Example: “I sorted out this week’s expenses,” “I sent my CV.”
5. Lean on others on purpose: Ask for help from someone who has walked the road before you. Example: “How did you start? And what would you do if you were starting today?”

A Simpler Mental Model

• Tools change; agency stays.
• An agent starts with the goal, then learns the tool.
• Waiting isn’t wrong, but waiting alone isn’t a plan.
• Agency is built through small steps that prove to you that what you do makes a difference.

No one has all the answers before they start.

The difference is that some wait for them, and some discover them along the way.

So the question is: Are you waiting for a ready-made path?

Or are you building your own path, step by step?

Today, pick one thing you’ve been waiting for someone to ask you to do, and do it before anyone asks.

Further Reading

• Agency — Markus Schlosser, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2019: The philosophical meaning of agency and intentional action, and the main debates around them.
• Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective — Albert Bandura, Annual Review of Psychology, 2001: Bandura’s core features of human agency, and its three modes: personal, proxy, and collective.
• Remembering Steven F. Maier — University of Colorado Boulder, 2026: The story of the learned helplessness research, and how its interpretation was turned on its head after decades of brain research.
• A meta-analysis of proactive personality and career success — Zhang et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2022: An analysis of data from more than 100,000 employees on how proactivity relates to career satisfaction, salary, and promotion.