Limiting Factors: The Key To Achieving Your Goals !

In becoming more confident and successful we each have a personal journey. The basics are the same, person A, B and C all want to have more self belief. They probably also are more likely to focus on what they do versus what others do. However, persons A, B and C may have different goals and different limiting factors.

Limiting factors are key to getting what you want, or should I say, eliminating them. Once you have gained new skills and habits you feel like you are well on the way to turning your life around. Then things seem to slow down, you are no longer making the progress you wanted. You may even find yourself slipping back and engaging in old habits. If you don't know why your progress has slowed, I suggest you look for these limiting factors. They are there for all use, no matter how successful or how much progress we make, we carry outmoded beliefs and ways of working.

The barrier of limiting factors is not a one time challenge. It is part of a recurring cycle. The cycle begins with identifying what you want and making the necessary changes. After a while results often come fast, then slow down, before you reach your goal. This occurs because as you increase you efficiency in one area, you are diminishing the potential for future growth in that area using current techniques.

After a while there is little more improvement to be gained from the technique. The only way to improve your progress towards to the goal is to tackle more than one factor in determining your success.

Imagine you were entering a car race, if your goal was to have the fastest car, it would be foolish to merely improve one factor. Most would focus on the engine (and even there probably only focus on one factor), but why not reduce the weight of the car, lower the suspension, get the exhaust upgraded and change the tires ? My point is, there are many ways to improve your performance, however, if you only focus on the most obvious areas of improvement.

Those things that you do not improve are your limiting factors. Some you will be aware of some you won't so to maximise the speed of your growth you must do two things: 1) Identify your limiting factors, 2) Learn to identify the unknowns. Limiting factors can be bad habits, or simply neglected areas. If you never improve anything but the central area you will only experience diminishing growth. If you focus on the support areas you will experience geometric speeds of change.

Geometric change means leveraging the power of multiple factors. Leverage several factors moves you towards your goal far faster as the results often multiply together. For instance, if you want to get a new job you may try and do voluntary work to improve your C.V. This may help, but the journey to getting an interview and a new job may seem long and arduous.

Lets identify the limiting factors in getting a new job:

Your primary area of change is increasing the value of your CV experience.

Areas that could enable geometric growth are also your limiting factors. In this case some of them could be:

The date you submit the application. Applications near the deadline may be discounted because of the high quality of previous submissions

The presentation style of your CV may no longer be current.

Your spelling may be poor, leading to your application being immediately dismissed on the basis that you must be lazy if you spend so little time on your one chance to get an interview.

Your focus. Are you stating the benefits of employing yourself or simply providing a biography ?

By no means is this list exhaustive, but it demonstrates how you can dramatically improve your chances of success if you find multiple factors that determine your success.

Do try and determine the worth of your limiting factors. They also obey the law of diminishing returns. Some will give too little benefit to provide a substantial benefit. If you make a list of twenty factors, I often find the top three factors are those worth focusing on, and the next four are worth spending some time on if you can manage after cracking the top three.

How do you identify those limiting factors that are unknown ? This is hard but is worthwhile. The factors may be unknown because they are insignificant in terms of impact. Or they may be unknown because your bad habits are invisible to you. Perhaps they are unknown simply due to an oversight.

The are only two major methods I know for discovering unknown limiting factors: other people and other problems. Looking at how other people approach tasks can certainly help, also getting them to examine your behaviour and your goals can help. The second approach is to try and see similarities between your current goal and other problems and solutions that have occurred before. By turning a situation on its head you can see the true value.

The truth about limiting factors is that in whatever are they are your hidden key to discovering exponential growth speed. They enable you to reach your targets faster than before, but ignored they can make achieving your dreams seem impossible.