The Organize IT Habits: Be Proactive [Organize IT]
A couple of months back I finally bought 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. It’s been very interesting and useful, almost as much so as GTD, and was a big inspiration behind my current system (if you’ve ever read it you may recognize some of the similarities to the chart displayed in the book). Only problem for me was that it tended to be a bit long-winded and somewhat lacking in practical advice, so I thought I would start my own series, discussing habits that I think are important to personal growth and being productive.
The first habit I will look at is to be proactive (also the first habit in the 7 Habits book, which may tell you the significance of it). Being proactive is a common feature in personal development and business management. Definitions can vary slightly but I choose to essentially interpret it as consciously taking matters into your own hands and always looking for ways to move matters, issues, projects and your life in general forward.
The key to being proactive is to ultimately develop a mindset that looks to solve problems (as much as possible before they happen) and take matters into your own hands. Evaluate your processes and procedures. Find out what works for you and what doesn’t, and adjusts matters accordingly. My previous job was dragging me down emotional and physically, so I decided to look for new positions. However, my initial approach was to apply for anything that came onto my radar. This meant I was only applying for one or two jobs a week and I ended up procrastinating on my search so I developed a new procedure, where I would look for five jobs (a reasonable number given the time I had) at the start of the week, then apply for each one a day at a time.
While I am on the topic of my previous job, the company went through a period were targets were being missed over consecutive months. With each month, more threats were made, bigger posters were put up explaining what were expected of us and longer emails were sent out to each department demanding improvement. As the threats/posters got bigger the missed targets increased. The management did not once stop to think about their processes, until an outside consultant came in and pointed out what the rest of us had subtly suggested; that their procedures of big posters, long-winded emails etc were flawed.
Note that being proactive does not necessarily mean acting on things every single time. It’s knowing when to actively do something. Sometimes it can be just as constructive to wait and see. Too many people though, take this approach as their natural, default response to opportunities in their life. They are reactive rather than proactive to events, only doing something when it directly affects them. For instance, that’s why so many people get into debt. They only act on the problem, when the bailiff is knocking on the door.
If you use GTD or similar productivity setups to manage your life, you are already on the proactivity ladder. You are taking charge of your time, projects, goals etc and managing them in a way that betters your life. People without systems only tend to deal with issues as and when they float onto their internal radar, rather like a boat drifting aimlessly in the sea.
Promoting my blogs has been a prime example of being proactive for me. I regularly look for ways to improve the experience for the reader, and opportunities to promote it and get more people visiting. I don’t wait around hoping these opportunities present themselves, I go and find them myself.
One way to encourage yourself to be proactive is to score your performance regarding each of your roles and responsibilities (read more here) in your life on a regular basis. Taking my blogging as an example again, I give myself a score from 1-to-10 each week during my weekly review. I objectively determine whether I did as much as I could possibly do that week to proactively advance my blogging role. That way, each week I have a motivational marker to push further.
Original post here: SpiKe
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