Agency varies in intensity, whilst the degree to which actors possess agency determines whether they are successful in accomplishing their tasks. It follows that actors must regularly monitor their agentic state, checking to see if their level of willpower is sufficient for the task they wish to undertake. Actors thus adopt a distinctive agency maintenance and repair mode and employ the manipulation of stimuli or their meaning to increase the amount of energy available to them. The need for such maintenance or repair is a common feature of everyday life, with actors having to find ‘whatever works’ to match their energy to the tasks. The various methods of achieving this, such as visualisation or the imaginative redefinition of stimuli, are then outlined. Alternatively, daydreaming or self-interaction through private speech may be employed to achieve the same result. It follows that a vital sub-category of all actions will have as their object the maintenance of the general power of agency. No theory of action is complete unless it explains how people manage to accomplish the goals they set themselves, which is why a dynamic interpretive approach is needed.