Reactive to Proactive: 4 Steps to Get You Off the Urgency Treadmill

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Constantly putting out fires can be exciting and make your days more interesting. It can also be exhausting and unsustainable. If you live in reactive mode, you give the power of decision away to someone or something else. That’s not how we want to run our businesses.

We want to be the ones to create the plan, set the goals, think proactively, and be strategic, right? That is what it means to run your business instead of your business running you. So how do we get off of the urgency treadmill?

Let’s take a step back and revisit a productivity tool I’ve covered before: the Eisenhower Matrix. The Eisenhower Matrix, attributed to President Eisenhower, breaks down your tasks into four categories:

• Urgent/Important

• Urgent/Not Important

• Not Urgent/Important

• Not Urgent/Not Important

Your Urgent/Important category is for your fires, your imminent deadlines. We’ll get back to this category in a minute. Urgent/Not Important is for things that need to be done soon or regularly but don’t necessarily need to be done by you. These are things you can delegate to someone else (social media management, website creation, video editing, grocery shopping, etc.). The Not Urgent/Important category is for those things you can schedule for a specific time. It’s not the priority now, but it will be at a later time. This is where you put your networking events, when you nurture professional relationships, work on continued training and self development, and plan and create for the future of your business. Finally, the Not Urgent/Not Important are all the things that you do that don’t really contribute to your success. This category could include social media scrolling, watching TV, and social events and tasks that don’t provide a return on investment.

If you find yourself hopping from one emergency to another, you may be living in the Urgent/Important category. At first glance, this looks like the place you SHOULD be, right? But, in this world you aren’t the decider. You aren’t moving toward your goals with intention.

In Stephen R. Covey’s highly-acclaimed book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he writes specifically about this error. In order to be effective, you should be living mostly in the Not Urgent/Important category. Here, you can be proactive. Here, you can be intentional.

So, how do we get there? Here are 4 steps to get you from reactive to proactive:

1. Review Your Habits

How do you approach your business? Your clients/customers? Your day? Do you think about these things as something you manage or something you create. Your mindset around each aspect of your business (and life) is a huge contributor to the habits you create and execute--sometimes without your conscious knowledge. So, take a close look at what you do in a day, what you think about these activities, and how you respond. If you live in the Urgent/Important box, you more than likely have some habits that are perpetuating this lifestyle. At the end of each day/week try asking yourself these questions:

1. Did I feel in control of my time?

2. How did that make me feel?

3. What unexpected fires popped up?

4. What could I do differently to plan and prevent these things from popping up again?

2. Find the Root Cause

Once you’ve taken a close look at your habits, it’s time to get to the root cause of your perpetual firefighting.

• Do you get a thrill from the drama of last minute tasks?

• Is there a common thread between your fires (tech/content errors, client boundary breaches, confusion and miscommunication)?

• Do you have a deep-seated belief that business requires stress and struggle?

By identifying the root issue, it becomes much easier to find a simple solution that can eliminate the majority of the last-minute Urgent/Important tasks that you find popping up.

3. Set Preventative Systems & Steps

You know what keeps popping up for you, and you have a good idea why. Now, let’s put a plan in place to limit or eliminate these things from happening again.

• You get a thrill from the stress and drama of the last minute task? Running into errors regularly? Then, how can you create a sense of urgency for yourself within your planned time so that you don’t have to go down to the wire risking delays and mistakes yet still feel that adrenaline boost?

• Clients pushing your time-commitment boundaries? Confusion and miscommunication among your staff? Set updated, clear rules and procedures for yourself, your clients, and your team so that everyone is on the same page.

• Do you believe that your business needs stress and struggle? Look for proof that it can flourish with flow and ease. Create a mantra or anchor for yourself that can serve as a reminder when you see yourself starting to fall back onto the struggle train. Work with a coach to shift your mindset.

Look at where you can create a process or system, creating new habits that match a proactive mindset. Automate tasks that add stress, errors, and miscommunication.

4. Create a Clear Plan for the Future

Now that you’ve set yourself up for fire-free success, it’s time to make your plans. What goals can you focus on now? Where do you want your business to go in the next month, quarter, year, or 5 years? What boundaries can you set to keep you focused on your key priorities? You get to be proactive. You get to be the decider.

Want some help setting your plans? Check out my Goal-Setting Workshop course here.