The Excellence Mindset, Pt 3: Proactiveness vs. Reactiveness
Welcome back to the Excellence Mindset series! If you haven’t had a chance to read the first two parts, I encourage you to go back and check them out.
Before we dive in, here’s a quick refresher on what this series is all about:
The Excellence Mindset is a professional posture rooted in self-leadership, humility, and purpose—where growth is intentional, impact is strategic, and high standards are a daily choice.
One of the more challenging aspects of an administrative professional’s role is how others-focused it is. As an executive assistant, my priorities are driven by my executive’s needs, my daily tasks are shaped by his schedule, and my goals are centered on partnering with him and representing him well. With so much of our role tied to others, it can feel difficult to see ourselves as leaders or decision-makers. But here’s the truth: we can take ownership of our role, and it begins with self-leadership.
Why Self-Leadership Matters in Admin Work
According to Management Training Specialists, “Self-leadership is the ability to influence and direct your own thoughts and actions to successfully reach goals and build a satisfying life.” It isn’t usually an inherent skill, but is one that must be developed and practiced, much like learning an instrument. Growth requires persistence and discipline, and choosing to strengthen your self-leadership can feel especially challenging when your focus is always on supporting others. The key to making progress? Shifting from a reactive mindset to a proactive one.
Proactive vs. Reactive
One of the most common things I hear from administrative professionals is, “I’m too busy to be proactive.” When the workload is stacked so high you barely have space to breathe, prioritization feels impossible. But this mindset keeps you stuck in a vicious cycle that inevitably leads to burnout. The good news? There are intentional ways to break free and regain control.
I think every administrative professional has faced this scenario: you’re buried in an Excel spreadsheet, scrambling to organize financial data for your leader, when a colleague calls or stops by to ask for a form you’ve already sent them multiple times. You sigh, knowing it will only take two minutes to resend. But once you return to the spreadsheet, you struggle to get back into your rhythm because you’re no longer “in the groove.” Soon, your mind starts wandering to email, the calendar, even texts. What should have taken 10 more minutes now drags into 30.
The Cost of Staying Reactive
We’re often called upon to multitask (juggling several responsibilities at once) or to context switch (jumping from one task to another without completing the first). It’s exhausting, and research confirms it. According to the American Psychological Association, disjointed workflows can reduce productivity by up to 40%. Other studies show that a single interruption can cost you up to 23 minutes before you’re fully refocused. This cycle keeps us reactive, ineffective, and ultimately burned out. So the question becomes: how do you limit these time-suckers?
Start by noticing the kinds of interruptions that derail your focus. Are colleagues repeatedly asking for the same form? Do people drop by your desk just to chat? Are irrelevant meetings appearing on your calendar without your consent? Once you identify these patterns, you can take proactive steps to address them. Here are a few strategies to get you started:
Practical Ways to Be Proactive
If your team consistently asks for the same information, create a shared repository—whether in Microsoft SharePoint or Google Sites. I won’t go into detail here since I’ve already written a full post on this topic. You can check it out here: [LINK TO GO-2 SITE BLOG POST].
Start time-blocking your calendar for recurring processes like expense reports, meeting scheduling, or document updates. For example, I set aside 60 minutes every Tuesday afternoon just for expense reports. Throughout the week, I drop receipts into a folder. Then, at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, I close my office door, silence Outlook notifications, log into Concur, and focus on updating expenses without interruption. If my executive needs me, he knows to text or call me directly.
If you’re frequently interrupted by requests outside the scope of your role, or tasks presented as urgent when they’re not, partner with your leader to set clear boundaries. Clarify your role, priorities, and the proper process for submitting requests. Sometimes this is as simple as sending an email to your team outlining your current priorities, the tasks you’re no longer responsible for, and the boundaries you’re setting around meeting requests or information requests.
All of these examples share one common thread: shifting your mindset from reactive to proactive. The pivotal question to ask is, “What can I do with this situation right now to save myself time and a headache later?” For instance, if you’re asked the same question three times a week and it takes five minutes each time, that’s 15 minutes weekly. Instead, you could spend 15 minutes once creating a system where your team can access the information themselves—saving yourself nearly 13 hours over the course of a year. Now multiply that by five questions, and you are increasing your productivity exponentially!
Think ahead for recurring needs. For example, if your executive orders flowers for Valentine’s Day, birthdays, and anniversaries, set a reminder two weeks before each date so you can prepare in advance. If you know financials are due four weeks before the board meeting, block that time now.
When booking travel, save your executive’s preferences, loyalty program numbers, and other details in a secure location so you don’t need to ask repeatedly. Take it a step further by tracking passport and ID expiration dates and setting reminders well in advance.
Just like investing in a retirement account, a small investment of proactive time today pays dividends later. The more intentional you are now, the more time you’ll free up in the future. Proactiveness is your “time” investment account!
Set Boundaries with Your Leader’s Support
We can also save ourselves time in the future by being intentional about what we say “yes” to, especially by aligning those commitments with our job description and our executive’s priorities. This reminds me of a conversation I had with Ashley Whillens, Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University, on The Admin Edge podcast. During our discussion on “How to Master Time Management” (August 13, 2024), she said:
“Anything we say ‘yes’ to now is a form of time debt. It restricts the amount of time we’ll have in the future for obligations we don’t even know exist yet. So do your best to ask yourself whether you could take on a task right now, when it comes across your desk. And if the answer is no, you’re probably not going to feel any different next week or in a month.”
The next time someone asks you to do something outside your role, be intentional about how often you say yes, with your leader’s support. I follow what I call the Rule of Threes:
· First yes: You’re going out of your way to do a favor.
· Second yes: You’re simply being nice.
· Third yes: You’ve now set the expectation that this task is yours—forever.
Be careful about what you agree to, and partner with your leader on these decisions. I’ve learned that being asked doesn’t always mean I must complete the task myself; it often means I should coordinate the right people to get it done.
For example, my executive once asked me to ensure that an overseas office had a TV screen installed in their conference room. I could have assumed it meant I needed to purchase the screen, arrange shipping, and coordinate installation myself. But that wasn’t my role. Instead, I connected with the head of IT and the office’s main contact, explained the request, confirmed it would be charged to my budget, and asked them to keep me updated on progress.
A few weeks later, I received a photo from the office with employees standing proudly in front of the new TV, giving me a thumbs-up. The project was completed—without me taking on unnecessary extra work.
Putting Proactiveness into Practice
Once you shift from reactive to proactive, you’re taking a huge step toward becoming more strategic and impactful in your role. As you apply this mindset, here are a few reflection questions to guide your next steps:
· What recurring tasks or interruptions are draining my time?
· Do I do my best focus work in the morning or the afternoon? How can I block time for deep work to minimize context switching?
· Can I commit to taking an extra 10 seconds at the end of each task to ask: “What can I do right now to save myself time and a headache later?”
Here’s my challenge for you: As you practice being proactive, think about how your efforts can align with your executive’s workflow. Identify one task on your executive’s plate that you can take off proactively—and then share in the comments how it went!
I hope you found this post valuable, and I’d love to hear your insights in the comments. In the next installment, we’ll explore how a growth mindset—combined with proactiveness—naturally leads to strategic curiosity: finding purpose in the systems you create to thrive in your role.
