Agency of Others
Create recurring in-person connection by building something with others
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 92%
Galloway recommends placing yourself where you must meet other people regularly while contributing to a shared purpose. A job, nonprofit, faith community, sports league, or service organisation can supply repeated contact, useful responsibility, feedback, and access to peers or mentors. The mechanism is structured proximity: instead of waiting for friendship to appear, join an institution where collaboration recurs and where other people notice whether you participate. Galloway connects this model to his own fraternity experience, which reduced the scale of a large university and gave him male peers who challenged his habits. He also argues that falling participation in communal institutions contributes to isolation, though his wider claims about population mental health are presented as his interpretation rather than established here.
Origin
At UCLA, Galloway joined a fraternity after growing up without many friends or male role models. He says the smaller community helped him remain at university and supplied peers who challenged him to attend class and change unhealthy habits.
Core principles
- 01Repeated proximity creates opportunities for real relationships
- 02A shared purpose gives social contact structure
- 03Other people provide feedback and guardrails
- 04Online interaction is not a complete substitute for physical presence
How to run it
- 1
Find structured proximity
Select an in-person group with a reliable meeting rhythm. Prefer one organised around work, service, learning, sport, or another shared objective.
Pro tip Choose a group you can attend weekly rather than an impressive event you visit once.
Watch out Check that the group is safe and compatible with your values.
- 2
Commit visibly
Take a role or responsibility that makes your participation matter to others. Repeated contribution is more useful than passive attendance.
- 3
Build together
Work toward the shared objective and let practical collaboration create conversation. Use the task as a bridge rather than forcing instant intimacy.
Pro tip Volunteer for a small task that requires coordination with one or two people.
- 4
Accept social feedback
Notice the standards, encouragement, and corrective feedback that come from being known by others. Apply useful feedback without surrendering personal boundaries.
Watch out Accountability should not become humiliation or control.
In the wild
Galloway says joining a fraternity turned a university of roughly 30,000 people into a smaller social environment. His fraternity peers encouraged him to smoke less cannabis, attend class more consistently, and take better care of himself.
→ He credits the group with giving him socialisation and helping him graduate.
Common mistakes
Waiting for friendship
Unstructured intention does not create the recurring contact from which relationships commonly grow.
Joining without contributing
Passive attendance limits the accountability and collaboration that make the mechanism work.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for people whose work, study, or phone habits leave them without regular face-to-face community.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when a group is unsafe, coercive, discriminatory, or a substitute for professional mental-health support when that is needed.
From the transcript
“put yourself in a position where you have to be around other people every day”
“be in the agency of others building something bigger than all of you”
From the episode
The Number One Reason This Generation Is Struggling: Scott Galloway