Are You Working Reactively, Rather than Proactively?

I was introduced to this idea recently, and it wasn’t in relation to work at all. I was speaking with a friend about my home renovation currently underway, and the myriad of problems that kept cropping up vying for my immediate attention.

I was telling her how hard it was to plan anything or stick to a set schedule when so much could go wrong, and how on any given day, what I planned and what would happen was often very different.

“So what I’m hearing is that your relationship with your home is currently very reactive, and maybe what you’d like to do is try and become more proactive in how you deal with it?”

My friend is a therapist, but she’s also an incredible businesswoman, so of course she would come out with a gem like this.

Reactive vs Proactive are terms most often used to describe management styles, but this way of planning ‘work’ can be applied to all sorts of areas of life. The ‘manager’ description is used to help us understand the part of our brain that analyses everything going on around us and makes decisions about where our energy and time is best focused.

Almost like an internal manager!

A reactive management style describes someone who is always putting out fires, focusing on whatever is demanding their attention first, which task is causing a problem right now, and who is metaphorically screaming (or even literally) the loudest. It’s about problem solving, which isn’t always a bad thing, because it also encourages creative thinking and agility. But it isn’t ideal to be coming at work or life from a reactive place 100% of the time.

If you are working or living reactively, you aren’t in control. You are instead led by whatever or whoever is asking your attention of you right now.

Proactive management is anticipating potential challenges in advance so that you are prepared to overcome them should you have to. It’s being aware of the day-to-day responsibilities while always keeping an eye on the bigger picture, and how the two interplay.

Tips to start working more proactively:

• Know you can’t anticipate every situation. Being proactive is about knowing and expecting the unexpected pulls on time, energy and resources, and factoring that into your plan.

• Don’t over-fill your calendar. If you fill your days to capacity, there’s no wiggle room when something important crops up demanding your attention. Leave empty space in your schedule for activities that take longer than expected or for moving things around last minute.

• Look at your top priorities. What is most important to YOU? What will make the biggest difference or have the largest impact?

• Expect and plan for the unexpected. If you’re able to, think about what some of the problems or roadblocks that might appear and throw a spanner in the works could be, and dedicate some time to creating strategies for managing these situations if they arise. What problems have arisen so far? What possible problems could come up in the future? It’s always nice to hope for the best, but having plans in place for worst-case scenarios can allow us to relax and fully focus on the important work day to day.

• Remember what is urgent to someone else doesn’t need to be urgent for you. This applies in work and home life.

We can’t plan for everything, last minute projects land on our desk or a leak appears in the roof that needs attention before it causes further damage. If we can help our ‘internal manager’ become more proactive then we can assess, through the noise, what is genuinely urgent, and what just LOOKs urgent, but can wait until the original tasks we had identified as truly important are done.

This can apply to business, it can apply to home life, it can apply to domestic labour, family or, in my case, renovating a house.

When moving from reactive to proactive thinking, it can be helpful to consider questions such as:

What are the top three tasks that, should they be completed, the day or week can be considered an overall success?

And

What 20% of the work that I do is getting me 80% of my results? Or, in other words, which relatively easy or simple tasks will make the biggest difference?

Do those first.

Try the low-hanging fruit approach.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and deep in ‘reactivity’ mode, another great trick is to go for the low hanging fruit. This is the most achievable task available that can be tackled in very little time but will begin to take you from purely reacting to proactively taking control of your work or situation and get momentum moving in a productive direction.

Ultimately, we need to have a balance of both proactive planning techniques and the ability to work reactively when necessary. Using proactive thinking to plan for future challenges while maintaining the flexibility and creativity we develop working reactively, we can become less stressed, more efficient and more productive in all areas of our lives.