In the next few decades, what could become your most important skill?

Original: Dan Koe

Translation: Dr.Hash CyberHash

In the next 10 years, most skills may become irrelevant.

Everyone is saying this, but is it true?

But if you are a person with “high agency,” this is not a problem at all. Why? Because your success does not depend on a specific skill. You are not someone who only focuses on one field. You haven’t limited yourself to pursuing high-paying jobs or glamorous degrees. You have your own vision, understanding that in this era, you can learn any skill, acquire any knowledge, to create the life you want.

Unfortunately, if your parents did not cultivate this “agency,” they might also be unable to pass it on to you. Unless you have gone through deliberate learning and reflection processes, you still have a long way to go before truly feeling “in control of the future.”

Therefore, the most important skill is agency. This ability is crucial now, in ten years, and even until your last day. Because if you can set your own life direction, take necessary actions to achieve your goals, and resist the various temptations and distractions of today’s world, you will not face the risk of being “replaced” (even if you are replaced, it’s okay, because you can quickly adapt to new environments).

Next, I want to share five core perspectives on “agency”: what it is, why it is more important than ever, and how to practice it to get the life you want.

1. Agency: The Permissionless Ability

“Only those who continuously resist can discover the truth, not those who obey.”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

To understand what high agency looks like, first clarify what it is.

Agency is not blindly following others.

Obedience means your thinking still relies on social standards.

Obedience is a stage of cognitive development, where your thinking is entirely influenced by culture, and the standards for judging truth are “whether it is popular” and “whether others accept it,” rather than based on your own direct experience or independent thinking.

Think carefully—this might be the biggest threat to living a good life.

When you are born, your mind is like a new computer. It has a basic operating system, but no content on the hard drive. In the first 20 years of your life, you do not think independently. That’s okay; no one can do it from the start. No matter how independent you think you are, often it’s just another form of obedience.

Research shows that about 50% of the population is in the obedience stage, meaning half lack a truly foundational cognitive basis for agency.

Obedience stems from survival instinct. Humans need to survive not only physically (reproducing genes like animals) but also psychologically (spreading beliefs, opinions, and information).

If you are working for someone, your agency in this field is very low because losing your job threatens your survival. So you must obey.

If you hold deep-seated beliefs, binding your identity to a particular religion or political party, your agency is also limited because your notions of good and evil come from culture, not personal examination and exploration.

In tech and business circles, everyone likes to talk about “high agency,” but this is often also a form of obedience to popular culture.

Even this letter itself carries a certain degree of obedience. In a sense, we are all obedient.

So, what does true agency look like? How can we cultivate this ability within ourselves so that our emotions, finances, and life opportunities are not controlled by others?

(1) High agency individuals can act without permission

“Having agency means you are the subject, not the object, of the sentence. It’s an active tendency to act rather than passively wait.”

— Devin Erikson

Agency literally means “being in a state of action or operation.”

When describing a person, it means “the tendency to initiate actions proactively to achieve goals without external prompts, instructions, or permissions.”

But when observing successful people, we find that success is not just about acting toward goals. Anyone can start a venture, but that doesn’t guarantee success. In fact, most people fail because they lack a key element:

If something doesn’t work, you reflect on the situation, make adjustments, and keep trying until you reach your goal.

So, autonomy is not just about action; it’s a firm commitment to “iteration.” Learning and practicing go hand in hand. Making mistakes and correcting them, rather than retreating into comfort because “this method doesn’t work.”

Yes, I am talking about those who give up after writing articles for two weeks.

(2) High agency people treat life as an experiment

Low agency individuals often display a “worker mentality.”

They are assigned tasks, usually accompanied by some status or certification, which makes them crave recognition from others, limiting their decision-making.

High agency people are scientists of their own lives.

They have an idea.

They set their own goals. They formulate hypotheses about how to achieve those goals. They test, adjust, research, and strive to get closer to their objectives. They will fail many times. But because it’s an experiment, failure is part of the process. They expect to fail because without trial and error, how can they find effective methods?

This is a major misconception about success today. People are used to promises from others, like a high-paying job or a business that can make quick money.

They do what they’re told, but when inevitable failure occurs, they think it’s impossible and blame everyone but themselves.

(3) High agency individuals believe in the value of difficulty

You want to become highly agentic because you believe these actions will bring positive changes to your life. You are trying to achieve a goal. Goals fall into three categories:

• Simple goals: things we do daily or can handle with existing skills.
• Difficult goals: things we can’t do now but can eventually do if we acquire the right skills and resources.
• Impossible goals: either completely impossible in reality or seem impossible until we complete a series of “difficult goals.”

Low agency people often have biases about difficult goals.

For example, in Seligman’s dog experiment, dogs were exposed to unavoidable electric shocks, making them feel they had no control over their environment. Later, when placed in a situation where they could easily jump over a small wall to escape the shocks, the dogs did not try. Even with an escape route within reach, they just whimpered and endured the shocks. Similarly, achieving your desired life goals can be very difficult, but you are conditioned to believe it’s “impossible,” so you don’t even try. Your brain doesn’t even allow you to consider that option. You silently endure the shocks of the predetermined life path.

However, agency can be practiced, but specific steps only make sense once you deeply understand how it applies in today’s world.

Two, AI is not a threat to high-agency individuals

You can now access any knowledge you need to achieve any goal.

Yet… people still do nothing.

This is the key point.

Success is easier now than ever before, but those who are destined not to succeed still won’t. It’s never about “access channels” or “equal opportunities,” but about agency. High-agency individuals will leave others behind at ten times the speed because they start acting without permission, and the barriers to action are now almost nonexistent. If you can’t achieve big goals due to lack of money or resources, you can set smaller, stepping-stone goals to acquire those funds or resources.

Everyone is worried about the same thing. Frankly, this fear is just because they cannot think clearly.

Take a typical example: everyone is shouting “AI-generated content is too much, human creators are doomed.”

First, AI is a tool.

Tools require humans to use them for specific purposes.

Of course, anyone can have AI generate a viral article or extract a thousand clips from a podcast, then sort them by viral potential. But what’s the use? You can get a bunch of likes and followers, but can you monetize that? Is there loyalty? Are there those things that truly support a brand? Yes, you can let AI help with these, but then you are doing something entirely different. You are learning. You are orchestrating the realization of a larger vision, which is not much different from doing it yourself. You are still the decision-maker.

Of course, AI can generate beautiful images on command, but there is a vast difference between “having a vision and using AI as a tool to realize it” and “just wanting to quickly produce a picture.” Many artists use AI to generate initial drafts, then fine-tune with Photoshop, injecting their style. Overall, AI reveals what is truly important in the creative process.

When you let AI make all decisions for you (in other words, it guesses what’s effective based on thousands of opinions online), there is no main thread. No theme. No personality. No vision. No context. That’s the essence of a creator: a context creator, not just content creator. Without context, content is meaningless, and AI-generated stuff is the same.

Apart from those brainless content and meme images (some of which are indeed funny), their only purpose is to keep you on platforms to be harvested by ads.

Get it now?

99% of AI-generated content will become garbage because if the content is effective, the value is already there—whether it’s AI-generated or not doesn’t matter much—because it’s most likely carefully curated by a human who injects their personal context.

When building a business, you must have a brand mission. AI is just helping you execute it. You need continuous iteration.

When writing a book, you must control all tiny details. Besides that, you need people to read it (audience, marketing, sales). The book itself won’t do these things.

In creating art, you must first have an idea that attempts to bring it into reality.

In other words, nothing has changed; people just dislike new things, and new things illuminate what was already important. If you can’t create art with AI, it means you are not an artist. You are just good at using tools like Photoshop. Tools can be replaced. Visions and agency cannot.

Three, Why generalists will win in the AI era

“The creation of schools is to enslave the smartest minds, promising prestige through specialization, keeping them narrow so they won’t overthrow the true rulers.”

Whenever I write about becoming a generalist, multi-skilled, or having diverse interests, someone always jumps out to tell me I’m wrong (and never provides coherent arguments why being an expert is better).

They quote Shakespeare’s classic: “A jack of all trades is a master of none” (all trades, all loose). But they don’t realize this phrase is taken out of context; the second half is: “But oftentimes better than a master of one.”

Some might think Shakespeare was a professional playwright, but he was actually a polymath. He had to deeply understand human nature, language, classical literature, stage arts, religion, philosophy, military tactics, music, navigation, natural sciences, social structures, medicine, and more… the list is long. He was an integrator, leveraging diverse interests as his strength.

CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, Darwin, Jobs, or any visionary strategist who achieved great success all have a specific vision, then learn and take necessary steps to realize it. Do not confuse a specific carrier or niche with “specialization.”

Experts depend on a skill. Skills evolve and are replaced with technological progress. We may not see it clearly now, but Photoshop disrupted the graphic design industry. AI is doing the same. Those “experts” relying solely on skills rather than true artistry will be furious, as you’ve already seen. Conversely, generalists focus on goals, doing what’s necessary (including changing goals) to survive in any field.

Let me further break down this idea: humans are creators of tools, and we can survive in any niche because we can adapt.

If you put a lion in Alaska and a polar bear in the African savannah, they will die. But if you put humans anywhere, they will build shelters, sew clothes, hunt for food because they can plan and execute.

The reality is, to educate large numbers of immigrant children in the 19th century (industrial demand), the US adopted the Prussian education model. This was not education but a tool for mass obedience. Its design aimed to produce obedient soldiers, compliant citizens, civil servants, and disciplined workers through compulsory attendance, teacher training, student exams, and grade divisions. Sounds familiar?

Society wants you simple, predictable, and easy to categorize.

Why?

Because it benefits them most. It aligns with organizational profit. If you understand systems theory, you’ll see that systems evolve into the most advantageous form for their ultimate goal—in this case, keeping you weak and stupid, whether intentionally or not. No conspiracy needed; the system naturally shapes itself according to the desires of those at the top of the pyramid.

What should you do?

If slaves are expected to do only one thing their entire lives, closing their minds to learning more, then you, as a free individual, are destined to do many things in your lifetime. Rebel against the path set for you at birth.

Pursue education based on interests. Use your abilities wisely.

Four, The 5 Human Abilities

Agency is great, but we are still bound by physical laws.

This raises another major concern fluctuating with the AI hype cycle:

Will artificial general intelligence make human intelligence irrelevant?

Let’s clarify with some questions.

Are human abilities limited or infinite? As high-agency generalists, can we learn anything, do anything, as long as our genes don’t restrict us? We adapt and thrive in various fields relying on knowledge and tools. The fundamental question about human ability is: Are there limits to what we think and how we think?

If the main constraints are brain processing speed and memory, can they not be enhanced? When AGI appears, won’t that make it more feasible? Won’t we become AGI ourselves? Are we not already in superintelligence? Won’t we be in the midst of superintelligence?

Speculating is interesting, but that day is still some time away, so I want to focus on the near future.

Humans have five basic abilities. Can AI make these abilities irrelevant?

1. Calculation (mental level)

Do we have an upper limit to our calculation ability? No, because once you have a general-purpose computer you can hold in your hand, calculating anything is just a matter of time and memory. We already have this. Even if AGI or aliens have it, their computational reserves are similar to ours, not superior.

You might say AGI calculates faster, but that doesn’t speed up the physical transformation process, i.e., building things. You might have an idea to build a particle collider, but you still need resources to build it.

2. Transformation (physical level)

Transformation is creation. With the right knowledge, we can turn raw materials into rockets.

Humans’ hands and bodies seem especially adept at creating anything through specific sequences of operations. We have built spacecraft and telescopes. This means we can make “tools that make tools.” We are generalists, creating tools to adapt to any environment. We are not animals limited to a single niche.

The question is: when these basic operations are linked in the right way, are there limitations?

The answer is also no. If humans can remotely control a gorilla, given enough time, that gorilla can also build a rocket step by step. Not just one gorilla. Imagine Elon Musk controlling that gorilla. What would he do?

The key is time. Transformation takes time. Singularity won’t change that, just like the Enlightenment or the Big Bang didn’t. Time is a compression algorithm that prevents everything from happening simultaneously. The Enlightenment and Big Bang obviously didn’t directly send rockets into space. In other words, AGI might compute faster than our brains, but that doesn’t mean it can produce physical objects faster than humans. You might have an idea to build a rocket, but you still need to acquire resources to do so.

So far, the concern about AGI seems rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of reality itself.

After calculation and transformation, there are also mutation, selection, and attention, related to exploring “concept space” (the unknown) or how we create knowledge. We can calculate and transform, but are we limited in the knowledge that enables us to do so?

Knowledge has two functions: First, to make specific things happen—preferably good things, not bad. Second, to capture patterns in reality.

This allows us to store information efficiently, avoiding starting from scratch each time. We understand macro concepts like sunrise and sunset, seasons.

Without this understanding, our lives would fall apart. Pattern recognition enables us to plan based on proximity. We know that in cold environments, we can freeze to death, so we use knowledge like “jackets” and “hotels” to stay warm during travel.

Imagine concept space (or the unknown) as a universe map with bright spots and dark spots. Bright spots are areas you’ve explored. Dark spots are where your potential lies.

This map is the surface area of your concepts, discoverable and testable against reality. When results don’t bring you closer to your goal or even lead you away, the problem is exposed—you must correct your course.

3. Mutation

Is there a limit to how many new ideas we can generate to survive and fulfill our heart’s desires?

With calculation, we can explore the entire concept space. With agency, we can take any step within that space, ultimately (after countless bad ideas) stumbling upon a good one. Through creation, we can move in unique ways, like flying over forests instead of walking through them.

Therefore, we can understand anything, create anything, and discover infinite new ideas to solve infinite problems. AGI can do these too. We are all bound by natural laws, but within those laws, all possibilities are within reach.

4. Selection

Can we come up with any ideas, but find good ones?

The potential problem is that without learning from mistakes, it’s hard to make cumulative progress. If you want to build an electric car but have to start from scratch with gasoline cars, that’s no fun. As a species, that would also limit our development.

As a general control system, we can navigate the concept space more efficiently, avoiding getting lost. We correct errors. There’s no fundamental difference here.

5. Attention

Another aspect of humans often taken for granted is our ability to shift focus by changing perspectives.

When a problem arises, where does your attention go? If you want to build a rocket, is praying useful? Or can you switch lenses, viewing the situation in a way that perceives opportunities?

Though this is a major human issue (paradigm lock-in and attachment to ideologies), when problems occur, we do have the ability to change where our attention goes. We can wear spiritual lenses to seek calm, or scientific lenses to seek progress.

Identifying with a purely spiritual philosophy and becoming an incomplete system are not the same; such a system cannot solve certain problems. Spirituality is a great tool, but it’s not a panacea.

Five, How to Truly Practice Agency

In daily life, we often take means for purposes. But in games, we can take purposes for means. Playing games can invert motivation from ordinary life.

— C. Thi Nguyen, “Games: Autonomy as Art”

You develop agency by practicing others’ agency until you can create your own. In other words, you follow rules until you can create your own rules. This means the highest trait of agency is knowing when to break free.

Overall, agency is not a trait but an art.

The best way to observe this art is through gameplay.

Painting records visuals.

Music records sounds.

Stories record narratives.

Games record agency.

When playing games, you almost always start with a goal: to win. From there, you have various tasks, but these tasks must be performed in sequence based on experience. You start at level 1, level up to 2 and beyond, and once you reach higher levels, you can revisit and apply all your knowledge and skills to design how to achieve the next goal.

The higher your level, the more interesting life becomes because you can choose the next challenge—big but meaningful. It’s no longer like a beginner tutorial assigned to you. That’s why you feel life is out of control. You’ve reached level 10 (childhood, school, work), then got stuck. The game is no longer fun because the designers don’t benefit from your leveling up, so they motivate you to stay there. You fall into a cycle of boredom and anxiety because all tasks are repetitive and mindless, and any further challenge overwhelms you because you don’t know how to learn. Your biggest boss fight in life is: following your own path.

How to start practicing?

First, find a goal to pursue.

Any goal works. Because no one truly knows what they want. Instead, they deeply understand what they don’t want, and use that as their future target. From there, you have a direction. Set a goal to make this direction more actionable, then follow these steps:

• Study others’ success processes. You can find these on YouTube, social media, courses from well-known creators, or mentors.

• Try various methods. Implement what you learn and see if you get results. (By the way, most methods may not work for you, but that’s okay).

• Identify patterns, principles, and key points. Record the most important parts of everything you try. These are usually the keys to success.

• Create your own process. Adjust what you’ve learned to fit your unique lifestyle and circumstances.

• Teach others. Teachers learn more than students; if you can’t explain things in a way that benefits others, it means you haven’t truly understood yet.

This is also why I love social media.

First, it’s where attention is. You can’t build a lifelong career through radio broadcasts or handwritten letters to potential clients. Clearly, you need to create content.

Besides serving as a low-threshold, low-risk, low-cost medium to do what you want, learning and agency are embedded within it. This is the greatest game of modern times.

You can learn their agency through others’ content, guides, and courses.

You can experiment publicly and get direct feedback—you can quickly identify what works and what doesn’t.

You are forced to learn a set of future-oriented skills.

You must really figure out what you want to talk about online.

This is your opportunity to decide how to use this information.