The Most Important Trait for Success in Business (and Life)
Nugget by Andrej Karpathy and Paul Graham
Hey friend!
For today’s letter, I picked a nugget from Andrej Karpathy (co-founder of OpenAI) and Paul Graham on a key trait for success in business (and life).
Well actually, the credit also goes to Grok, since Andrej explicitly used an explanation from Grok — but it was just… spot on!
👤 Doers
💡Nugget
Andrej's tweet was actually a reply to a tweet by Hardik Pandya, where he quoted:
"Capitalism rewards agency far more than it does intelligence."
Below you can read Andrej Karpathy's reply...🟠 Andrej Karpathy:
Agency > Intelligence
I had this intuitively wrong for decades, I think due to a pervasive cultural veneration of intelligence, various entertainment/media, obsession with IQ etc.
Agency is significantly more powerful and significantly more scarce.
Are you hiring for agency?
Are we educating for agency?
Are you acting as if you had 10X agency?
Grok explanation is ~close:
“Agency, as a personality trait, refers to an individual's capacity to take initiative, make decisions, and exert control over their actions and environment. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive—someone with high agency doesn’t just let life happen to them; they shape it. Think of it as a blend of self-efficacy, determination, and a sense of ownership over one’s path.
People with strong agency tend to set goals and pursue them with confidence, even in the face of obstacles. They’re the type to say, “I’ll figure it out,” and then actually do it. On the flip side, someone low in agency might feel more like a passenger in their own life, waiting for external forces—like luck, other people, or circumstances—to dictate what happens next.
It’s not quite the same as assertiveness or ambition, though it can overlap. Agency is quieter, more internal—it’s the belief that you *can* act, paired with the will to follow through. Psychologists often tie it to concepts like locus of control: high-agency folks lean toward an internal locus, feeling they steer their fate, while low-agency folks might lean external, seeing life as something that happens *to* them.”
Related to this, Paul Graham said the following on an interview with Geoff Ralston:🟠 Paul Graham:
It turns out is not that important to be smart. Is much much more important to be determined.
If you imagine this hypothetical person who's like a hundred out of a hundred for smart, and a hundred out of a hundred for determination. And then you start taking away determination, it doesn't take very long before you have this sort of ineffectual but brilliant person.
Whereas if you take someone who's like super, super determined, and you start taking away smartness bit by bit, eventually you get to some guy who owns a lot of taxi medallions. But he's still rich, right? Or like a trash hauling business or something like that.
[So] you can take away a lot of smart.
P.S. You can find this nugget and 2,600+ more nuggets on my personal notebook 👉 DoersNotebook.co (a searchable and topic-classified database)
I loved that question from Andrej:
"Are you acting as if you had 10X agency?"
That question is a great reminder that we have much more control over our lives than we think we have.
And it also reminded me of this insightful quote:
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw
Another way to think about this is to imagine the opposite of agency and then try to avoid it like the plague. In my opinion, the exact opposite of Agency is the feeling of Victimhood...
"It’s very counterproductive for an individual to feel like a victim — even if he is. Best attitude is just to be cheerful about everything and keep plugging along.
...
Who wants to be a victim instead of a survivor? [Rhetorical question] You can recognize your position as bad and try to improve it — that's okay. But to have a deep feeling that it’s all somebody else's fault is a very counterproductive way to think. People don’t even like being around them. It’s really stupid…"
- Charlie Munger (source)
✍️ New Essay
I recently co-authored (with Brian David Crane) an essay in which we explored the differences between mistakes and regrets, and we came to the conclusion that this distinction is key to unlock maximal growth and living a life with minimal regrets.
It’s mainly grounded in the philosophies of Steve Jobs, Nassim Taleb, Jeff Bezos, and Jerry Seinfeld.
If you are curious, you can read the full piece here - https://spreadgreatideas.org/contrasts/mistakes-vs-regrets/
💥 Stuff I Loved
I think Dr. Jason Fung is great! I’m also reading his book The Cancer Code — which was praised by Nassim Taleb on X
I’m listening to all the series of episodes (from the podcast Philosophize This!) on Fyodor Dostoevsky. It’s a psychology masterclass dressed up as a novel!
Talk you soon,
Julio :)