My reactor stance is really all about keeping options open. Sticking to a highly detailed plan puts emphasis on where you are in relation to the plan rather than paying attention to the signals that your environment is sending to you. Every action prompts some kind of reaction. Watching those reactions is the best way to progress against a really challenging problem. Every reaction provides a little more information about what you're dealing with. The solution can usually be found in the accumulation of those little clues.
The underlying basis for this stance is my conviction that we don't really know all that much about what we're dealing with in pretty much every area of modern life. My experience as a chemistry graduate student convinced me that our knowledge and understanding of the world is a faint shadow of what's really going on. We can never be sure of what's going on, so it's best to progress in a manner that maximizes your ability to respond to new information. Of course this has to be done in an aggressive enough manner that you actually prod whatever system you're working on reveal something about itself.
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