MEET CATE HALL
Hi, I’m Cate Hall. I’m the author of You Can Just Do Things, out July 21 via Harper Edge.
I write about personal agency from the perspective of someone who learned it late in life — to make it easier for you to learn it, too. Everything I know about agency comes from my personal experience: as a former Supreme Court attorney, no. 1-ranked female poker player in the world, drug addict, biotech founder, and the CEO of a multibillion-dollar foundation — in that order.
I WRITE REGULARLY ON SUBSTACK AT USEFUL FICTIONS.
AGENCY IS HAVING A MOMENT. IN SILICON VALLEY AND BEYOND, IT'S BECOME THE TRAIT EVERYONE WANTS TO HIRE FOR, THE QUALITY INVESTORS LOOK FOR IN FOUNDERS, THE THING PARENTS HOPE TO INSTILL IN THEIR KIDS.
There's a growing recognition that the capacity to see and act on possibilities others miss — to find the hidden doors in the walls of life — matters more than credentials or connections.
People generally talk and act as if agency is an innate attribute. Either you have it, and you can live a life of freedom and accomplishment, or you don’t, and you’re adrift in our increasingly automated world, where those who climb predictable ladders are no longer guaranteed a prize at the top.
I’m direct proof that this view is wrong. I started out life as a robot — a high-achieving, socially awkward person zealously doing randomly chosen chores for prestige, who went to law school because that’s what people do. I was totally bound by the life script I was handed. But I underwent a gradual awakening to a different way of being, one in which every constraint placed on my life could be questioned. It began during my journey to become the world’s top-ranked female poker player, and then continued after a devastating drug addiction, when I had to completely rebuild my life from scratch.
My path out of the hell of addiction became a path toward radical openness. I learned to ask stupid questions, seek feedback that scared me, and always look for shortcuts. Within a few years of leaving the halfway house, I was co-CEO of a pandemic medicine company, and then CEO of one of the world's largest private foundations.
After making this wild journey, I wanted to teach others what I knew, so they wouldn't have to learn it by wrecking their lives. My deepest hope is that this book changes how you see yourself — that you finish it knowing, in your bones, that agency isn't something you're born with but something you can build, without having to hit rock bottom first. That every skill I used to remake my life is one you can learn, too. All of the lessons that carried me are here, and they will teach you to find the hidden doors, however you currently live.