How to Take Over the World
How To Be More High Agency & A Political Plan for Taking Over the World (Free Preview)
Thu, 24 Apr 2025
On this premium subscriber I talk about how to be more high agency, including how to frame problems, design solutions, and take action. Then I talk about my recent travels to the Bay Area and some thoughts that spurred about a concrete way to take over the world. Links: https://takeoverpod.supercast.com/ https://www.highagency.com/
Chapter 1: What is high agency and why is it important?
Hello, and welcome to How to Take Over the World. This is Ben Wilson. High agency. This is one of the major through lines of all the great leaders that we talk about on this show. They all have incredible agency. They take action. They're proactive. They happen to the world. The world does not happen to them, I think is the best way to think of what high agency is.
So today's episode is a principles-based episode where I'm going to share some of the ideas that I've been thinking about based on my recent reading. And high agency is one of those things that people are talking a lot about.
Chapter 2: How can I develop a high agency mindset?
And also I've at the same time been thinking about because of some of the recent episodes I've been doing, especially Edwin Land, someone who was very high agency from a very young age. And so that came to the forefront. So on this episode, I'm going to be talking about how to be more high agency, what are the various components of it, how to think about problems in a more high agency way.
I think this is a major key for taking control of your life and accomplishing more. So hopefully it's of use to you. I'll also be previewing future episodes. And at the end, I share one idea for how to actually take over the world in current day, 2025, a major opportunity that I think is out there that people are not taking advantage of.
This is a subscriber only episode, so I'll be doing five minutes free preview, but then maybe it'll be ten. I don't know. We'll see where I cut it off. But then the rest of this 30 to 40 minute episode is going to be for subscribers only. OK, so let's start off with how to be high agency.
As a reminder, high agency is the ability and belief that individuals can take control of their lives, define their goals, and take action to achieve them rather than feeling powerless and blaming others, external factors. It's about actively shaping your own destiny and outcomes. Again, you happen to the world, the world doesn't happen to you.
And I do think that like anything, certain people have a predisposition towards this to be high agency, but there's a lot you can do to learn it. I would compare it to being fit, right? Certain people are just born athletic. They're fast, they're strong naturally, but just about anyone can train their way into the top 2% of strength or speed. And becoming high agency is similar.
Like certain people are just born high agency, but there are definitely things that you can do to be more high agency. And once you do these things, it unlocks a lot in your life. I've seen this. I'll share a couple of personal examples as we go. So you look at someone like Edwin Land, five years old, his father comes home, finds him taking a part of the family phonograph, gets really mad.
And he decides in that moment that he's never going to let anyone block him from doing an experiment ever again in his entire life. And sure enough, in his twenties, he ends up sneaking into the University of Columbia Laboratory at midnight. He props open a couple of windows during the day to conduct experiments because he's not a student there, so he can't use it. But he's high agency.
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Chapter 3: What are the key components of high agency?
No one's going to stop him from doing what he wants to do. And that starts at age five. But it doesn't have to start that young. Steve Jobs has a great quote. He says, life can be so much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people who are no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it.
You can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again. And I think that realization could come at any point in life and it can come in degrees over time. So let's break this down into three categories. of how to be more high-agency. The first is how to frame problems. The second is how to design solutions. And then third is how to execute.
Chapter 4: How do I frame problems to enhance agency?
All right, so let's start with how you frame the problem. The first thing to do, and this has been really helpful to me, is to define every problem starting with the sentence, I don't know how to X. Okay, I picked this up from a recent episode of Alex Hormozy's podcast, and it's been a really great tool for me. So how does this shake out?
Let me give you an example from my own life to make it maybe a little more concrete. So my wife gave birth to our fourth child a week ago. And so it's been really difficult to find time to work out, especially in the morning, which is when I like to work out because it gets my day going, gets me active.
So the low agency way to think about it, which is what I was doing at first, is to just leave it as this undefined nagging problem. It's a complaint. I would like to work out in the morning, but I can't because my wife is up with the baby all night. So I have to be with the other three kids until about 8.30 AM. Okay. It's a complaint. It's an undefined problem.
And it uses the word that we hate, can't. But then redefine it. Once I redefine it, I say, I don't know how to both work out in the morning and spend time with my kids from 630 to 830 AM. Even just reframing it basically solves the problem, right? I don't know how to do. Of course, you know how to do those two things. Okay. You could start working out at five or 530, pull a Jocko.
Or the solution I ended up on is I'll just work out with my kids either in the backyard or I throw them in a stroller and I push it up a hill and then do some pushups with them on my back. Okay.
So just reframing a problem is I don't know how to X. It puts you in a high agency mindset because, oh, then I could learn to do X. So any problem that you have in your life that hasn't been defined in this way, try doing that. And all of a sudden it becomes a lot easier to find a solution because by reframing it that way, put the onus on yourself to learn and figure out the solution.
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Chapter 5: What practical solutions can I implement for high agency?
Chapter 6: What is the significance of personal examples in understanding agency?
So the low agency way to think about it, which is what I was doing at first, is to just leave it as this undefined nagging problem. It's a complaint. I would like to work out in the morning, but I can't because my wife is up with the baby all night. So I have to be with the other three kids until about 8.30 AM. Okay. It's a complaint. It's an undefined problem.
And it uses the word that we hate, can't. But then redefine it. Once I redefine it, I say, I don't know how to both work out in the morning and spend time with my kids from 630 to 830 AM. Even just reframing it basically solves the problem, right? I don't know how to do. Of course, you know how to do those two things. Okay. You could start working out at five or 530, pull a Jocko.
Or the solution I ended up on is I'll just work out with my kids either in the backyard or I throw them in a stroller and I push it up a hill and then do some pushups with them on my back. Okay.
So just reframing a problem is I don't know how to X. It puts you in a high agency mindset because, oh, then I could learn to do X. So any problem that you have in your life that hasn't been defined in this way, try doing that. And all of a sudden it becomes a lot easier to find a solution because by reframing it that way, put the onus on yourself to learn and figure out the solution.
Now, of course, sometimes reframing isn't quite as simple. The question itself doesn't recommend an answer. This is true when you have these real big, hairy compounding problems, right? So, for example, think George Washington at the worst moment of the Revolutionary War. He hasn't had a victory in a while. The Americans are out of money. The troops are unhappy because they haven't been paid.
And it's this circular problem. The troops don't want to fight because they haven't been paid, but you're not winning victories, so you can't raise more money from other European powers. So if you reframe the problem with this one, it's I don't know how to pay my troops to fight for me so we can win battles so we can win this war.
Maybe that reframe would help for George Washington, but even when you reframe it, the solution isn't immediately obvious. So these are the sorts of situations that are really difficult, right? You know, when I talked about reframing the problem, that's high agency 101. Okay, now we're onto 201. So the first thing you do is get really clear about the problem. Define it in excruciating detail.
Steve Jobs comes back to Apple and he's got a similar thing. The workforce is demoralized. The market doesn't trust Apple anymore. They're hemorrhaging money so fast that in 1997, A Wired magazine has a magazine cover with the Apple logo on the front and it has one word, it says, pray. So again, you have tons of problems and they all compound on each other.
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Chapter 7: How can reframing problems lead to solutions?
And even when you frame it that way, it's not necessarily going to give you a solution. This is a highly stressful situation. But Steve talks at length with his CFO and he wants to know exactly how much money do we have left? How much runway do we have and how fast are we losing money? Because when it's just we're hemorrhaging money, ah, what is the solution to that? It's vague.
And so you can't have action oriented solutions to vague problems in the same way that if I tell you I'm depressed.
what's the solution there there is no if i start to define it of i am depressed because i'm not sleeping well and i'm not sleeping well because of x maybe a overly simplistic reason to be depressed but okay it's just an example right once you start to define it the solutions even if the solutions aren't clear then parts of the solution become clear right at least small action items that you can take to make the situation better start to become clear
So you want to define the problem very exactly. And then at least action items start to appear and you become high agency. You start figuring out things to do, to be active instead of ruminating, worrying, stressing the things that you can do when you get in one of these kinds of death spiral situations.
And then the third thing to do when framing is almost never accept that anything is impossible. Napoleon famously hated the word impossible. Elon Musk has a great quote about this. He says, physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation.
And this is a good way to think about it because once you accept that something is possible, you just have to ask whether you are willing to pay the price. If something is possible, there's a price for everything. There's a famous Sherlock Holmes quote. He says, when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
And I would just change that last word to the solution. When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the solution. So... When you assume that a problem is possible, if it doesn't defy the laws of physics, then you get some pretty improbable solutions when you think about stuff.
Good example of this, again, going back to Elon Musk, there's a great story from, what's the biography? It's his SpaceX biography, where he needs to get his rockets from Texas, where they are built, to Florida, where they are launched. And he wants them there in three weeks, which is impossible. All rockets are moved via barge on the Gulf of Mexico, and there just aren't that many barges.
They take a long time to get from Texas to Florida. It's just not possible on a barge with the existing system. So he says, what if we drive them? And they say, well, that doesn't really seem possible either. And he says, it's not impossible. It doesn't defy the laws of physics to drive a rocket ship from Texas to Florida.
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