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Agency

2021-08-30

Years ago I got a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner certfication. Wasn't a big deal for me at the time, but I keep noticing little things that I learned back then that I keep returning to.

“What is NLP?” - a short explanation

NLP is a lot about communication, with others, with yourself. How do you talk to yourself? How does that make you feel? That's the most interesting things for me. But I am a natural introvert, extroverts will probably get more out of applying NLP to communication with others, but the principles are the same.

And the thing that prompted me to write this is a page from a book that was shared with me, where the author argued against the consumption of caffeinated beverages, saying that companies "pump employees full of caffeine". Those were the words (my translation). What pisses me off about that is that it takes away employees' agency. Agency, "the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power" (meaning #2 in the online Mirriam-Webster dictionary), is a very important word.

If you have no agency, you're likely to be very unhappy. And by making it employers that pump their employees full of caffeine it takes away the agency of the employees to choose _not_ to imbibe. That is something I notice *a* *lot*.

Instead it should be expressed in a more active voice, that even though delicious caffeinated beverages are readily available, their positive effects have diminishing returns, and limiting caffeine to the early hours of the day improve sleep/life quality. For example. A really bad example, I didn't do very well. Sorry.

I personally was drinking too much coffee, like 10 cups per day. Sometimes supplied by energy drinks in the afternoon if I hadn't slept enough, which is often the case. That made me feel almost burned out after a few months of just more and more coffee.

If I believed my employer was pumping me full of caffeine, that would have been difficult to do anything about, not even changing jobs, because the quote said "employers", all of them, not just "some employers", so not even changing my employer would have helped. And there _are_ free coffee and energy drinks at work, so it is made easily accessible by my employer, but I choose to believe I have agency over my caffeine consumption. So I went almost cold turkey and cut back to just one cup in the morning, and that's it. Kind of, because I have noticed I've had 2, sometimes even 3 cups during the morning lately, so I have to be a more active agent of change towards drinking less coffee. I love coffee, so I have to stay vigilant. Maybe stop consuming coffee completely?

Anyway, "agency" is a hell of a word. I find it very powerful.

A small note about NLP: Wikipedia characterise NLP as a pseudoscientific method, and I agree. It is _not_ 100% correct, it is very much based on heuristics and generalisations. I see it as a pragmatic engineering approach to psychology, it is not perfect, but it is the 20% effort that get you 80% of the way towards the goal, whatever that is. And that is surprisingly effective.

This post brought to you by 2 cups of coffee and needing to muster ~546% more agency.