Eat That Frog

 
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are holding you back from achieving your goals, are internal. They 
are within yourself, within your own personal qualities, abilities, 
habits, disciplines or competencies. 
Only 20% of the limiting factors are external to you or to your 
organization. 
Your key constraint can be something small and not particularly 
obvious. Sometimes it requires that you make a list of every step in 
the process and examine every activity to determine exactly what it is 
that is holding you back. Sometimes, it can be a single negative 
perception or objection on the part of the customers that is slowing 
down the entire sales process. Sometimes it is the absence of a single 
feature that is holding back the growth of sales of a product or 
service line. 
Look into your company honestly. Look within your boss, your 
coworkers and members of your staff to see if there is a key weakness 
that is holding you or the company back, that is acting as a brake on 
the achievement of your key goals. 
In your own life, you must have the honesty to look deeply into 
yourself for the limiting factor or limiting skill that sets the speed at 
which you achieve your personal goals. 
 
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Successful people always begin the analysis of constraints by asking 
the question, "What is it in me that is holding me back?" They accept 
complete responsibility and look to themselves for both the cause and 
cure of their problems.
Keep asking, "What sets the speed at which I get the results I want?" 
The definition of the constraint determines the strategy that you use 
to alleviate it. The failure to identify the correct constraint, or the 
identification of the wrong constraint, can lead you off in the wrong 
direction. You can end up solving the wrong problem.
A major corporation, a client of mine, was experiencing declining 
sales. They concluded that the major constraint was the sales force 
and sales management. They spent an enormous amount of money 
reorganizing the management and retraining the salespeople.
They later found that the primary reason that their sales were down 
was a mistake made by an accountant that had accidentally priced 
their products too high relative to their competition in the 
marketplace. Once they revamped their pricing, their sales went 
back up and they returned to profitability. 
Behind every constraint or chokepoint, once it is located and 
alleviated successfully, you will find another constraint or limiting 
 
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factor. Whether it is getting to work on time in the morning, or 
building a successful career, there are always limiting factors and 
bottlenecks that set the speed of your progress. Your job is to find 
them and to focus your energies on alleviating them as quickly as 
possible.
Often, starting off your day with the removal of a key bottleneck or 
constraint fills you full of energy and personal power. It propels you 
into following through and completing the job. And there is always 
something. Often a key constraint or limiting factor is the most 
important frog you could eat at that moment.