Maybe you’re not trying

It seems to me that frequently, to realize that your resources in a domain has improved, you need to heavily risk the very few resources that you know you have.

In the example the author gives, her husband did not have that inaccurate, yet reasonable perception, and only in hindsight does the author realize her own inaccurate perception.

I cannot recommend that readers take the author's advice to heart as carelessly as she presents it. There is some merit to it, but there are sometimes real consequences when you try when your perception was accurate that you shouldn't have, and you have carelessly misread your increase in capacity, especially if you are desperate for it.

You do not have to compete with yourself, or anyone, to get better.

Getting better comes from collaborating:

- Being attentive to your practice (i.e. recording, going over your work, etc.)

- Asking, and taking the advice of other people in your field (i.e. find places where there are people older than you who have done the same tasks, and consult with them)

- Being exposed to diversity of thought (i.e. teams more diverse in culture, race, and gender, consistently come up with a better array of solutions — this directly benefits you, helps you think along alternative dimensions and perspectives, exposes errors you may have encoded)

- With art, taking on voluntary restrictions to inspire you — art prompts, game jams, etc.

Sure, some of these can be framed as competition — maybe you might frame being attentive to your practice as competing with your past self, and taking voluntary restrictions as competing with the others in the game jam or whatever — but I very, very much prefer to frame them as collaborating — in a solo practice session, you're collaborating with yourself to find the flaws and fix them, in a game jam session, you're collaborating with those around you to produce lots of interesting and good art.

In many cases, you literally cannot improve without depending on the advice of those around you — another perspective, a second pair of eyes, the well-worn advice of the 40yro burned out techies. Framing those as competition will actively just burn you out, in the end (or otherwise people will pick up on it and be less likely to help you, lol).

I never refuted your hypothesis, I just pointed out the fact that the universe being deterministic has nothing to do with whether it's worth it for you to believe that you can achieve things and therefore try. Nor did I say that whether you believe it depends on something you can control. Assuming determinism, it's always worth it to believe that you can achieve things and try, even if it's as a result of me saying this.

Believing -> trying -> accomplishing

The arrows are causal links. Whether the state of believing is achieved through chance or choice is irrelevant.

I've always noticed that when I'm giving advice to someone or trying to help out, it always feels their problem is easier than whatever problem I have. As someone with some anxiety around things like calling some company to get something done or asking a random stranger for some help in a store, I would gladly do it if it was to help someone else (family member or friend). But when it's for me I find it harder.

I wonder how much psychologically we can be more confident and less anxious when we're doing something for others vs ourselves..

"No agency" for me means pretty much that. What does "no agency" mean for you?