#39 Agency and taste: the two most valuable skills of the next decade
AI can create anything. Only you can choose what matters.
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Let’s start with a simple experiment.
The table below is a self-evaluation. Be honest: in each row, which column sounds more like you—Option 1 or Option 2?
Most people end up with a mix of both columns. That’s normal. But here’s the key:
Option 1 reflects high-agency behavior. Option 2 is how most of us are conditioned to operate.
And here’s the good news: agency isn’t something you’re born with. It’s something you build.
What is agency
Agency is your capacity to shape the direction of your own life. High agency people don’t wait to be told what to do. They act. They question assumptions, design their own systems, and adapt faster than the environment around them. When the path isn’t clear, they move anyway.
Low agency people aren’t lazy or unmotivated. But they’ve learned to operate in reaction mode. They wait for clarity. They wait for permission. They stick to scripts written by others and often feel frustrated when the results don’t match what they were promised.
In a world increasingly shaped by AI, this difference is no longer subtle. It’s decisive.
Knowing how to do things is no longer rare. AI can already write, code, summarize, and plan more efficiently than most people. But it can’t decide what’s worth doing. It can’t create meaning, choose direction, or take responsibility. That’s still our job.
And that job starts with agency. The skill of choosing your own path.
This shift isn’t just philosophical. It’s practical. The world has changed, and with it, the rules for how we create value. To understand why agency and taste matter so much today, we have to look at what the old system rewarded, and why that model no longer works.
Why agency and taste matter more now
For decades, success followed a simple formula. Get good grades, attend the right school, work hard, and climb the ladder. That system worked because the world was designed around it.
Gatekeepers controlled access to opportunity. Universities and corporations were the main path in. Credentials acted as trust signals, especially when there was no easy way to show your work. Most jobs were well-defined. Your task was to execute reliably, not to explore.
That world is gone. Read more on the broken social contract in our previous post.
And I’m not the only one thinking this way.
With AI automating writing, coding, summarizing, analyzing etc. the value of simply knowing how to do something is collapsing. Execution is becoming a commodity. AI can already generate thousands of outputs in seconds. What it cannot do is choose which ones matter.
That’s where humans come in.
In this new world, the two skills that rise to the top are AGENCY and TASTE.
Agency is what moves you to act. It’s what pushes you to open ChatGPT and ask a better question. To refine the prompt. To experiment. To learn what these tools can do and to build something with them. AIs do not create on their own. They respond. If you don’t know what you want to explore, what to test, or what problem to solve, no model will fix that for you.
Taste is what helps you decide what’s actually good. Because not everything AI creates is useful, original, or meaningful. In fact, much of it is generic, derivative, or simply wrong. Taste is the filter. The human judgment. The sense that tells you when a piece of writing is insightful or flat. When a product is elegant or clunky. When an idea is signal or noise.
Together, agency and taste are your new competitive advantage.
Imagine AI writes a hundred essays for you. Can you tell which one is great? Can you even tell if any of them are? That takes taste. And taste is not innate. It’s developed by reading widely, studying great thinkers, and learning what excellence feels like over time.
If you want to make great things with AI, you still need to know what great looks like.
In a world where anyone can create anything, agency gets you moving and taste keeps you aligned.
But if these are now the keys to standing out, it raises a harder question. Why do so few people possess those skills?
How to build agency and taste
Agency and taste are not fixed traits. They are skills. And like any skill, they develop through repetition, reflection, and environment. Here’s how to build each:
AGENCY
Agency is your capacity to act. It begins with believing that your choices matter and that you have the ability to influence outcomes, even if you don’t control everything.
Mindset: Start with the belief that you can change. A growth mindset makes movement possible because you’re not waiting to feel ready. You’re willing to try, learn, and adjust. Every setback becomes information, not identity.
Action: Start small. Launch the experiment. Ask the uncomfortable question. Say no once. Say yes once. Let your kid handle something without stepping in. Agency grows through lived experience, not theory.
Environment: Agency is contagious. Spend time with people who act without waiting for permission. Their default to initiative will push your own sense of what’s normal and possible.
And remember, agency doesn’t mean defiance. It means choosing consciously. Sometimes the highest agency move is compromise, when it’s deliberate, not passive.
TASTE
Taste is your ability to discern what’s good, meaningful, or excellent. It is the internal filter that helps you choose signal over noise, whether you're reading, designing, building, or writing.
Exposure: You can’t develop taste without seeing what quality looks like. Read the classics. Study world-class work in your field. Revisit the best instead of always chasing the newest. Over time, this creates an internal library of excellence.
Comparison and reflection: Don’t just consume. Analyze. What makes this sentence better than that one? Why does this design feel clean, while another feels cluttered? Reflecting on the difference between good and great sharpens your instincts.
Making things: Build, write, create, and then judge your own work. Compare it to the best. Learn to see your own gaps. That is not self-criticism, that is self-education. Taste improves not just by looking, but by making and noticing what falls short.
Curation: Share things you admire. Curate playlists, articles, visuals, or products. Teaching others what you consider excellent forces you to articulate your standard and refine it.
Taste is slow to build, but once you have it, it becomes your compass. In a world of endless content and infinite creation, those who can tell what’s truly good will lead the way.
The real invitation
You already know what waiting feels like.
You’ve followed the rules. You’ve optimized within the system. You’ve done what was expected.
Now imagine what might happen if you stopped waiting.
This isn’t just about work. It’s about how you parent. How you love. How you learn. How you lead. It’s about whether your life feels like something you’re creating—or something you’re managing.
Agency is the practice of asking, again and again, what do I want to stand for. And then moving in that direction, even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.
Start small. Speak clearly. Choose deliberately. Let others grow without stepping in to control the outcome. Build something you care about. Break a pattern you’ve outgrown. Every time you take responsibility for the next step, you expand your capacity to shape what comes next.
In a world of infinite information, automation, and noise, human agency may be the last great competitive advantage.
What would your life look like if you had 10x the agency?
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