Maybe you’re not Actually Trying
Importance: 5 | # | productivity, agency
I think we are all like this. People are not just high-agency or low-agency in a global sense, across their entire lives. Instead, people are selectively agentic.
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.
Instead of doing [actionable] things, you just put up with it. Or, worse, you fight through your anxiety using an earlier solution that required willpower, and the exertion of willpower makes you feel like you’re trying. But the feeling of effort doesn’t mean that you’re Actually Trying.