The Focus Course

What exactly is reactive work?

It’s the opposite of proactive work.

Instead of dictating the flow of your day, you spend your time reacting to whatever it throws at you…

The steadily increasing “unread” notifications in your inbox
The random request from a colleague that you suddenly make your top priority
The short term problem you focus on at the expense of longer term goals

Reactive work is what happens when you assign false urgency to tasks and activities that don’t ultimately align with your most important priorities.

The big problem with false urgency

Warning: the “false urgency” mindset is something you have to train yourself to resist.

For example, I spent years working as a marketing director for a large organization where the overwhelming cultural vibe was based on urgency: Everything was urgent all the time. We were constantly changing directions, doing new things, and reacting to whatever urgent issue was arising. Sometimes things were actually urgent, but often it was false urgency.

When I quit that job and began working for myself, it took me years to detox from that urgency mindset.

Even in my work and life, I felt that if something wasn’t urgent, then it wasn’t even important. As a result, I would often neglect any task or area of life that didn’t have an urgent and pressing matter.

Obviously, this urgency mindset leads to HUGE issues!

When we have an overwhelming urgency mindset, it blurs the lines between that which is actually important and that which is not. Everything begins to feel important all the time…and that, in turn, creates a lot of anxiety, stress, and worry that otherwise need not exist.

Does any of the following sound familiar?

• You have little or no time for your own projects and passions: Your day is filled up by urgent issues you feel you must respond to. You feel like you wake up to your day, rather than waking up for your day.

• You’re constantly taking care of stuff that someone else should have done: It happens to all of us. The question is, are you doing anything to address the root cause of the issue? Or are you simply gritting your teeth and “pushing through”?

• You put important tasks off until their due date because you’re so overwhelmed with the chaos of your day-to-day: This is what happens when you don’t give yourself space to work on something until it’s 5-alarm urgent.

This is what the treadmill of reactive work and false urgency feels like.

How to break out of the “false urgency” mindset

This won’t happen overnight.

In the coming days, I’m going to send you several free resources to help you take proactive steps away from reactive work.

But for now, there are two mindset shifts you need to start working toward:

• Mindset Shift #1: Embrace boundaries

It’s natural to think of boundaries as a bad thing — as obstacles that fence you in and hold you back from the freedom to learn, discover, and grow.

But if you want to achieve focus, boundaries are essential.

Those who lack boundaries will try to do it all. They will say yes to everything. They will constantly hop from one thing to the next. And eventually the margin in their schedule will evaporate, leading to burnout.

When you are living in burnout, you are unable to give your time and attention to that which matters. You are unable to walk out your values.

Boundaries liberate you to live a focused life! Proper boundaries protect the things which you care most deeply about. Boundaries empower you to stay focused on that which is most important and to avoid the pain of burnout and the frustrations of unfocused responsibilities.

• Mindset Shift #2: You need a system for your time

Maybe you’ve tried systems for planning your days and weeks before. Maybe you haven’t.

Either way, if you’re struggling with reactive work, you haven’t found the system that works for you.

Don’t give up. I promise it’s out there. Keep yourself open to the idea that you can take back control of your time and focus it on the people, projects, and passions that are most important to you.

We’ll be digging into what that system might look like for you soon.