It’s hard to be proactive.

Being proactive is taking responsibility for what is yours: your emotions, your tasks, and your mistakes. Being proactive is also taking initiative — taking action before action is required.

When it comes to readers, taking a proactive or reactive approach is much better than doing nothing. For example, if I had ignored every single comment and/or email I received regarding Ajax Edit Comments, I would have missed out on many great opportunities to interact with readers on a more personal basis (and the plugin development would have suffered).

An Example of Not Being Proactive

I know a person who rarely checks his work e-mail. If you want to communicate with this person, it better be through a phone call or face-to-face.

I asked him one time, “When are you ever going to clear out your inbox?”

He replied, “Oh, once a year I just delete all the e-mail in my inbox.”

“What if someone needed help and you just deleted their email?”

He smiled slyly and said, “If it’s important enough, the person will e-mail again.”

Lack of Time Hinders Being Proactive

Whether you have a day job, school, kids, or a combination, life can get extremely busy sometimes. There are some days few e-mails come in, and days where I can’t keep up.

Sometimes I am just physically and emotionally drained after a long day of work and an hour or so at the gym. It is during these times that I don’t want to answer the e-mail, or just want to glance over a comment and not give it a second thought. But it’s during these times when you can provide the most service.

It’s easy to just sit back and perform reader triage and give the reader in the most pain the attention. However, the reader with the smaller issues needs help too.

The Dangers of Not Being Proactive

Many are content to just sit back and react to life’s problems and situations. When someone refuses to be proactive, it’s easy to start placing blame on everything around you. If you aren’t doing anything to affect the situation, then other factors must be causing what is bothering you.

By being proactive, however, you are taking the initiative to mold things into what you want them to be. If you fail, it’s your fault. If you succeed, it’s your success. And if you set out to achieve a goal and you achieve it, then it’s your achievement.

Not being proactive is simply getting in a boat and letting the waves toss you around with no idea where you will end up. And if you end up in an undesirable place, it’s easy to place blame on someone or something other than yourself.

Conclusion

It’s difficult to be proactive, whether in the offline world or with readers on a website. Being proactive enables you to take the responsibility for what is yours and to affect the path towards your own success. For example, if you want more readers, what are you going to do about it?

Being proactive also means you’re willing to take initiative and give your readers attention and service.

I urge you not to be a leaf blowing in the wind, or a boat without sails being tossed in the waves. Be the one who takes the initiative and responsibility. Be the proactive blogger.

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