The Actives

Some people thrive when they get to be proactive, and others excel when they get to react. Often we force both kinds of people into the form of work they hate.

In a way, we don’t like to see people doing either kind of work exclusively. It’s silly, but it’s human nature. When we see someone being proactive too much, they’re “rocking the boat.” Or maybe they “have their head in the clouds.” They’re “a dreamer, not a doer.” Or if they are doing, they’re “reinventing the wheel.”

Meanwhile, when we see someone who’s excellent at putting out fires but there currently isn’t one, they’re “lazy.” They “lack initiative,” and are “followers, not leaders.” They spend all day “sitting around, waiting for something to do.”

The fact is, some people are really good at making plans, and other people are really good at putting out fires. Not only are they good at those things, but they prefer to do them! But for some reason, we all really seem to dislike letting people exclusively (or even mostly) do one or the other.

When someone is a firefighter and there are no fires, we all feel this itch to have that person “do something proactive.” We pay someone to be our network troubleshooter, but when there are no network issues, we want them to be coding or something. But that makes them worse at troubleshooting! We want our firefighters to be ready to fight fires, not exhausted and distracted.

Likewise, if someone is really good at building long-term plans, it’s a crime to pull them out of that to, you know, put out a fire. We’re making them worse at the thing they’re best at.

Ultimately, I think these are symptoms of a larger issue we humans tend to have – we don’t like seeing people being successful doing things they like doing. We feel as though in order for success to be “earned,” it has to be at least a little unpleasant. If you can be successful while also being happy, your fellow humans tend to think you’re somehow scamming someone.

Don’t fall for it. Do the things you like and you’re good at – and to the extent you possibly can, don’t force other people not to. Whenever you have the authority to let planners plan and troubleshooters shoot trouble – let them be active the way they want to be.