Passive vs aggressive

When should we be passive and patient, when should we bend reality and be aggressive?

A question from one of James Clear’s past newsletter stuck with me:

Sometimes it benefits us to be passive: to allow life to come to us and unfold without force. Other times it benefits us to be aggressive: to bend the world to our will and actively shape the life we want.
Are you being too passive or too aggressive right now?

How do we tell when to do which, as an indie hacker and entrepreneur?

How do we know when to be passive and flow alongside the tide of the market?
How do we know we should be proactive in bending reality?

Some thoughts:

Passive

• When you’re in a situation where you don’t have much control over

• When acts big or small makes little difference

• When it calls for presence—observing, listening—than solutioning

• When things aren’t broken, don’t need fixing…or even going well

Aggressive

• When I have a lot more control and autonomy than I realised

• When a small act can have huge differences

• When you’re called on by others to contribute

• When things are sub-optimal

I’m not sure where I’m going with this thought experiment.

Truth is, I feel more led along by the market, my products, my customers right now than bending reality proactively.

Maybe it’s a phase, my current life stage, a natural season of life.
Maybe I’ve done a lot of bending in the past and now it’s just time to let things come to fruition.
Maybe there’s a lot of things out of my control now and it’s time to watch.

Maybe that’s why I needed to figure it out by writing this down.

How do you tell when to be passive, when to be aggressive?

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