Proactive vs Reactive

I've been dealing with a lot of very stressful things lately, and I finally realized why it feels like I'm not speaking the same language as the people I'm dealing with. We are using the same words, but with differing underlying concepts.

Reactive thinking is dealing with the exact problem at hand, no more.

Proactive thinking is figuring out how to prevent a problem from happening, to look ahead at what causes problems like that, and to eliminate the causes.

Permaculture is very proactive. My thinking is very proactive, probably a lot of why I clicked so well with permaculture. And why you often hear me say "I HATE bad design." Bad design can only be dealt with reactively, when my brain says "Why was it done like this in the first place? What would have been better design? Can I incorporate that concept into the repair, so it never happens again, or at least is less likely and is repairable easier if it does?"

Permaculture problem solving starts with "Define the ACTUAL parameters of the problem." The ACTUAL parameters often don't look much like the obvious ones at all.
An example:  "I need to fix another flat tire!" may back up to the ACTUAL problem being "My tires keep going flat because the rocks in my driveway are sharp" and the quick "I need to change the tire, yet again" still has to has to be done, but adding a load of rounded gravel to the driveway may stop the tires from going flat in the first place.

To me dealing with the ACTUAL parameters of the problem is a MAJOR part of dealing with the obvious ones. And the words used are the same, but the underlying concepts and the actual actions are not. When I say "I'll fix that" I have a visual in my head of what I will do to fix it, and fixing it entails stopping it from reoccurring, as much as possible within the budget and resources available. The people I'm dealing with say "I'll fix that" and do the absolute minimum required to claim it's been done.

We DON'T have the same underlying concepts although we technically speak the same language.


How can we learn to communicate and understand people when the underlying concepts of our words do not match?

I have learned that interrogating them about what exactly they plan to do is not considered appropriate, as I am not the person paying them, just the person who has to deal with it when their "fix" fails yet again. If I'm not in the position to tell them what exactly they must do, how can I cope with this?

My shed door keeps falling off. I keep putting i back on (reactive). What I need to do is mend the bottom hinge somehow, so it doesn't keep falling off (proactive)

When I worked in engineering problem solving was a major part of my job. As you say, properly defining the problem is a major part of solving it. Indeed if you haven't done that correctly then anything else you do may be a waste of time, or actually make the situation worse. If you, the person paid to do the job, and the person paying for the job all have different ideas of what actually needs to be done, then no one is going to be happy. Maybe the person doing the job if they are paid regardless....
So in this case 'the problem' appears to be that what you need doing, isn't what the person doing the job has been told to do. Sounds fair? So you need a way of getting the person paying for the job to agree that what you think needs doing is what actually needs doing, and giving appropriate instructions.

There are also multiple chains of causation towards a single event or problem. We can follow each one and see where it leads us, and figure out the most effective and most radical (as in, going to the root) way of resolving our problems.

The root of all problems, as people love to speculate of, is existence. If nothing existed and there were no one to experience problems everything would be just fine, right, wouldn’t it? But we like the world, that is why we try to be good to it.

Let me use a recent example. Some mice were being a noisy menace and eating my sunflower seeds and pooping all over in bowls and so on. So initially I woke up at multiple points in the night to growl at them to go away, and use light in an attempt to deter them. That didn’t work very well and lead to lost sleep.

Next I tried hanging my food from the rafters but they still got in. Third, I trapped them successfully, with my humane oiled-bowl trap, but that only helped for a few nights. The food was still there. And I hate such a high effort solution.

These attempts were identifying the problem as such:
1.  The mice eating my food
And
2. The presence of mice.

If I accept the presence of mice as natural, then I can go onto the second chain of causation, which is how the food is stored. Finally, I realized that if I put my sunflower seeds in a heavy lidded clay jar then the mice couldn’t get in. Thus I rephrase the problem as “how my food is stored” and finally I can get some rest! The mice are still around, but they aren’t a menace, don’t run all over the floor and poop on things, and are quiet.

So maybe it isn’t always the root cause that we are looking to fix, but the one that goes with the way of things by changing the things that are longest lasting, yes, and also nearest to our control, especially in dealing with life with nature and other beings in the world.