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Can You Just Do Things? - by Cate Hall - Asterisk Magazine

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Clara Collier: In the spring of next year, you have a book coming out called You Can Just Do Things. It’s about agency. I’m interested in agency as a buzzword, as a concept, as a Silicon Valley cultural phenomenon, as a thing I can exercise in my life — maybe even as a thing I shouldn’t exercise so much in my life. So, to start: How do you define agency? And why did you want to write a book about it? Cate Hall: I define agency as the capacity to both see and act on all of the degrees of freedom that life offers. So it has two components: One is noticing degrees of freedom, the other is taking action on the basis of them. I think agency is a hot topic right now for a lot of reasons, but I personally care about it because I have been through periods of my life that were characterized by very low agency, which made me miserable. I think that there is a pervasive belief — in tech and in the Bay Area, but also in the the world at large — that agency is an inherent trait. I think that is rea

Can You Just Do Things? A conversation about how agency is gained, used, and misused. And also love, drugs, and the Enneagram. Cate Hall Nov 17, 2025 209 8 29 Share Clara Collier: In the spring of next year, you have a book coming out called You Can Just Do Things . It’s about agency. I’m interested in agency as a buzzword, as a concept, as a Silicon Valley cultural phenomenon, as a thing I can exercise in my life — maybe even as a thing I shouldn’t exercise so much in my life. So, to start: How do you define agency? And why did you want to write a book about it? Cate Hall: I define agency as

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