Someone recently asked me, "How do you manage your day so that you are proactive versus reactive? I assume you have lots of people/projects pulling for your time – how do you stay focused?"

Here was my response:
There's always a blend of proactive versus reactive in everyone's day. The best mix of those will be different for everyone, based on what your job and personal life require. In the GTD book, this is described as the 3-Fold Nature of Work (p.50). For me, I build in plenty of my own proactive time so that when I do get pulled in new directions, I'll be ready for that and my own work won't suffer. I give myself my own defining work time in the morning and evening just to collect, process & organize. Many days I'm reacting to things I had no idea would show up--which is not always a bad thing. It's a balance and an intuitive judgment call that only you know works or not.

I'm guessing interruptions are a big part of you not staying focused as much as you'd like. Get rid of the easy ones like turning off the email notifiers for every new email. If you're working with people who are pulling on your time more than you like, then set boundaries. People are likely interrupting you because you've trained them it's OK to do that. If you work in a culture of interruptions, you've got a bigger challenge to deflect the interruptions without offending and alienating. Give people options. For example, if someone comes to your door and says, "Got a minute," and you really don't, give them a time you can chat. If you get a project delegated to you that will blow your other priorities out of the water, it's up to you to decide whether that's a good thing for you or not. Communication is key. There's a good chance that when someone delegates something to me, they don't have a clue what else that affects. It's up to me to know what will not get done, if I say yes to this new thing coming in. Having my project and action lists current definitely makes it easier to change directions and shift priorities more easily.

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