On being reactive.

Which of these two words is more descriptive of your life: proactive or reactive? It seems that for me the best description of my life lately has been “reactive.” I’m reacting to the circumstances around me more often than I’m keeping my eyes scanning the horizon and proactively handling situations as they arise.

My favorite definition of “proactive” comes from a paper I read years ago. I no longer know the original author, but the quote is wholly appropriate.

“In a nutshell, being proactive is the same thing as being reactive. The only difference is that you do the reacting ahead of time.”

Another person I know likes to say that he’s to busy “putting out Little Johnny’s fires” to “take away his matches” to describe why he’s often in a reactive mode rather than a proactive mode.

And let me tell you something, always being in a reactive mode will really take the starch out of your collar after a while. When I’ve let myself be at the whim of my circumstances rather than become the master of my circumstances, I’m usually exhausted at the end of the day. I stay up too late trying to get caught up, sleep poorly and then am tired the next day as I try to get caught up again while handling the fires that “Little Johnny” keeps setting.

Being reactive is no fun at all!

So how do you break out of a reactionary mode? That’s the tricky part. Usually once you’ve realized that your life is swinging from one emergency to another, you’re so deeply into a reactionary mindset that it’s very difficult to break free.

For me, when I’m finding myself this way, by the time the day is done and I’m asleep I’ve only tackled things for other people and not for myself. That’s a key - when you’re in a highly reactionary mode you’re probably largely driven by other people - external forces. When you’re in a highly proactive mode you’re likely driven by yourself and your own internal forces.

The word “no” is an amazingly powerful tool to help you break out of a reactive mode. If other people are causing you to be reactive, then you have to limit their access to your time, talent and resources. Nancy Regan had it right when she told people to, “Just say No!”

It’s difficult to tell someone you can’t help them - it’s more difficult to tell them you won’t help them. The trick is to tell them why you’re telling them “no.” People generally want to help each other out - so often explaining why you’re saying “no” will be understood by others. Be firm, stand your ground, and just say, “no.”
You have to triage your time, and learning the art of “no” is the first step to taking your time back. Once you have your time back, you have to figure out what is coming at you so you can begin to move from a reactive mode to a proactive mode - so you can do your reacting ahead of time.

You have to try to see the “big picture” and understand what is happening around you. It’s easy to know what is happening to you, but if you don’t have a context of things around you, you can’t become proactive because you’ll never know what’s coming next.

Start by outlining your major projects, get clear and get it written down. Make sure you can see it in a context that makes sense to you.

Then start adding names of everyone who will have input to your project. These are the people you have to connect with to find out what else is coming. Remember that they’re having an input on your projects, but someone else is having an input on their projects. It’s possible the people who input on their projects will cause crises for you, so get to know what’s happening with those around you.

I once worked with a manager who liked to talk about “socializing” his projects. I always thought it was silly “management-speak” but really what he was doing was keeping his projects visible to those he was counting on, and keeping an eye the projects of those he was counting on at the same time.

If you don’t know a storm is coming you can’t prepare for it. Once you know a storm is coming you can prepare and be proactive.

You should also know that you will fail at this from time to time. It takes energy to keep yourself “in the loop” with all of the contributors of your projects. It takes energy to cope with the emergencies and burning fires on your plate while you begin to make changes to be more proactive.

It serves no purpose to beat yourself up when you do notice you’re working in a reactive manner. You should realize that your reactivity is a symptom that you need to deal with, not a failure you should feel bad about.

You should instead praise yourself for catching the slip into reactionary mode and use it as an indicator that you need to put the breaks on, evaluate your projects and take corrective action to stop reacting to your circumstances.

Remember, you should be the master of your circumstances. Take a break, just say no, “socialize” your projects and get back in control!

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March 2nd, 2006

Entry Filed under: Time Management, Improvement, Habits