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…us to lose ourselves. - A sense of personal control or [[agency]] over the situation or activity - A distortion of temporal experience…
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Agency is the feeling of being in control of what you’re doing. Even if there is no such thing as free will, we feel like there is, so the concept of agency remains useful.
Agency is essential to motivation
I’m a bit fuzzy as I read it years ago, but recall from Charles Duhigg’s Smarter Faster Better: The New Science of Productivity research that feeling in control is an important part of being motivated to do something. Put another way, a common reason we procrastinate starting a task is feeling like we have to do it. One strategy to counter this is to remind yourself of the choice you made that is the reason you “have” to do something. For example, I get weary cleaning up the food my 2-year-old drops on the floor during the course of an average meal. I can feel like “Ugh, why do I have to do this?”, which can lead to discouragement and even mild resentment. But it helps to remind myself that I really wanted another child, that my partner and I chose to bring him into existence. Rather than cleaning his crumbs being something I have to do, it’s something I get to do as a natural consequence of something I really wanted.
Agency Can Be Cultivated
In psychology, agency is related to having an “internal locus of control,” meaning you feel like you mostly choose what happens to you. An external locus of control, on the other hand, refers to feeling like a plaything of fate, that life is something that happens to you. Research by Carol Dweck on mindset suggests that an internal locus of control is a skill that can be learned.