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Published July 21, 2015 | Updated August 22, 2018
How do you begin your day? If you’re like a lot of dealers, you wake to a smartphone alarm at 6:00am or so. Then, inevitably, before anything else, your eyes are drawn to that little colored badge on your email app…and boom, you’re immediately caught up battling the dragons of the day. No wonder you’re tired, frustrated and anxious before you even hit the shower.
Welcome to Reactive Mode, the default mode of stressed out businesspeople everywhere.
What Reactive Mode Is (and Why It’s Bad for Business)
Reactive Mode is beginning the day by asking, “Okay world, what have you got for me today?” The world, being the world, is only too happy to give you a metric ton of errands and action items and concerns, all marked “urgent”. But are they urgent for you? Or someone else?
The problem with starting the day like this is that it allows the world to set your agenda, to fill it up with everything but what you need to be doing to reach your entrepreneurial and personal goals. Instead of instigating events, you’re caught in an endless cycle of reacting to them, which leaves you no time or energy to move forward. To get where you want to go, you have to break the cycle of reactivity and get into Proactive Mode.
What Proactive Mode Is (and Why It’s Essential for Success)
If Reactive Mode is asking the world what it’s got in store for you, Proactive Mode is saying, “Okay world, this is what I’ve got lined up for you.” Every day, before the world has its say, you have yours. You set the tone. You set the agenda.
Of course, the day may not work out exactly the way you intend. In fact, it probably won’t. But what will happen is that, over time, you’ll find yourself moving closer to your business and life goals, instead of running around in circles. You may not be driving all the time, but you’re driving some of the time. And you’re in charge of the map (or the GPS app). And that can be enough to get you where you’re going.
7 Tips for Getting Into Proactive Mode
So how do you start your day in Proactive Mode? A few tips:
If you’ve been stuck in a reactive rut lately, try taking some time at the beginning of the day to get your bearings before you set out. It could be just what you need to take your business to new places.