Heuristics

Life

Between the fairly low upper limit on lifespan, the even lower intervals on healthspan and the true spans value being randomly distributed, life is genuinely short. If you internalize this you'll use your time more effectively minute for minute.
If you could lose the last six months of personal growth (skills, psychological, etc) and maintain homeostasis in your current environment, you're not growing fast enough assuming a relatively young person.

The best model I know of for agency is the OODA loop. Other models of agency exist, but the OODA loop emphasizes speed which is what earthlings were designed for by natural selection.
Life Force might be defined as "the frequency of OODA loops performed by an agent across a standard timespan".
The OODA loops we care about are the ones that change the path dependence of our life above some standard threshold. It's not about program complexity. The loops you use to brush your teeth are staggeringly complex, but don't change your life very much.
If you have no accomplishments to your name, start by competently executing something small.
Big accomplishments often build on small accomplishments.
When your expectations about the world are violated, that's a clue opportunity is nearby.
"If not me then who, if not now then when?"
You must be invested in the world to find the motivation to affect it.

If you can't get started in five minutes, you'll probably waste two hours doing nothing.
When you find yourself unable to start, focus on getting yourself in a position to do the smallest thing possible. For example, if you need to brush your teeth start by standing up.
Certain things are easier to do "when you're in the mood" than others, but waiting on the muse to carry you to victory is a mistake. Whenever you can, learn how to do things even when you don't want to. Cory Doctorow for example decided to pursue writing as a career after he learned the stuff he wrote when he wasn't in the mood was as good as the stuff he wrote while inspired.

Escape from Plato's Cave requires a leap of faith. Doing things requires faith, faith that you can impact the outcome, faith that something is possible at all.
You usually can't know in advance exactly how you'll do something, so your best bet is to do the first reasonable thing and see what happens next.
The Pomodoro method works because it forces you to write down what you are doing, commit a specific timeframe to do it in, and give yourself breaks. You can make it work even better by adding social accountability into the mix.

If a formal model doesn't perform as well as intuition, prefer intuition.
Every modeled probabilistic belief (i.e, all beliefs) should have a corresponding anti-belief representing the other side(s) and how much evidence you feel there is for them.
Belief typed objects in the brain do not just express truth, they are a method for compressing concepts we learn and experiences we have. If you only maintain belief-typed objects for things you believe are True in the strict sense, you'll have self imposed myopia that affects you and compounds negatively going forward every single time you evaluate your world. If you systematically fail to record evidence and ideas in this way, you simply won't have the necessary material to make large updates to your worldview.
A lot of illegible, hard to measure skills like design and social interaction come down to discernment. Your detection threshold for things like lies, excuses, incorrect industrial design, or alienating social behavior will dominate your ability to be ruthlessly honest, honest with yourself, create a smooth functional product, or charm others.

Jargon costs you accessibility, so it better 'pay rent' in terms of increased audience understanding or significantly compress the text to be worthwhile.
It's easier to write a strong short post about one subject, than an engaging long post about ten.

High life force. Consistently orients themselves about their environment, projects what it should look like and then takes action towards that.
Able to comprehend many perspectives simultaneously, in conversation and thinking. The Fox versus The Hedgehog, but a little more broadly.
Usually has one or more deeply developed skills or perspectives, to a degree that can be completely hidden from the outside.
Puts deep work into the orientation stage, generates 'paths to victory'.
Not LARPing, willing to put in two hours of work on something that's aversive or boring.
Willing to be wrong for 5 minutes, cares more about global benefit of correctness than the short term pain of correction.

If they can't wiggle their big toe they probably can't become someone that does something boring for two hours.

Enlightenment is about curbing desire, as in the Buddhist worldview all suffering is said to come from unrequited desire.
Desire is the key driver of agency, so curbing desire curbs life force. Desire is life and enlightenment is death.
If you are too invested in the world you need enlightenment, if you are too alienated you need desire.
The ideal state is neither totally worldly or totally enlightened, but a superposition of the two in which one is both alive and dead at the same time.