Pastimes, High-Agency People, Consume Less

One Insight From Me

I’ve noticed something about the big goals I set for myself. They rarely arrive when I expect them to. That’s why I’ve stopped using outcomes as my main signal. What feels more reliable, day to day, is progress and presence.

Progress shows up in small, honest ways. Business revenue moves in the right direction. More people found and subscribed to my newsletter. Nothing dramatic. Just steady movement forward. And that movement creates energy and feeds drive.

Presence shows up somewhere else entirely. Walking my dog without rushing. Long rallies on the tennis court where thinking disappears. Reading and writing after a slow breakfast with my wife. These moments don’t scale or compound, but they deepen everything else.

You’re doing better than you think if you’re making progress and staying present.

Improve a little. Pay attention fully. That’s how momentum builds without losing yourself along the way.

Three Ideas From Other People

You don't have a hobby, you have pastimes. Watching TV is not a hobby, nor is eating out or listening to music or smoking or playing video games. Those are pastimes. Something that you do to enjoy yourself... but you're not producing anything, and you cannot get better at it. Hobbies are skills—they make you a more interesting person, they are something you can get better at, and they are usually transferable in other domains.

Bax | ​@baxate_carter​

High agency people have a bias for action. They believe everything is a story, and they can change an outcome through their influence. They know if they don’t have a solution, they can always find one.

Tim Denning | ​The Secret Life of People with High Agency​

What’s required is the will to resist the urge to consume more and more experiences, since that strategy can only lead to the feeling of having even more experiences left to consume. Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem. Instead, you get to focus on fully enjoying the tiny slice of experiences you actually do have time for—and the freer you are to choose, in each moment, what counts the most.

Oliver Burkeman | ​Four Thousand Weeks​

One Question to Reflect On

If nothing “arrives” yet, would today still feel well-lived?