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We all have barriers that are holding us back from a higher level of success.

At least monthly, we should be asking ourselves the following three questions, and then taking actions to break through our current barrier.

1) What action am I not taking because I am waiting for something to happen, or the situation to become clearer?

Many times we are held back by the fear of uncertainty, and the fear of failure. Taking action by ourselves is not successful in these situations. We need a team to support our actions, or a coach. Utilization of all of our resources will diminish our fear. The first step is to recognize the fear, and then strengthen our desire to reach our goal.

2) Which goal am I not working on because I don’t know what actions to take?

If we find ourselves struggling to take action because we are confounded by options, or stuck with no options, then we need to get past this knowledge barrier. Some of the strategies include strengthening the expertise on our team, increasing our own knowledge, and seeking outside expertise.

3) Which goal do I never have time to work on?

Time is our most limited resource. We all face the challenge to best utilize the time we have available. If we feel overwhelmed or overworked, it is time to reevaluate our purpose, our priorities, and our agenda. We can get so caught up in today’s issues that we forget to put challenges within the perspective of our overriding purpose. Schedule a day to reflect and plan. Start with vision and purpose and end with actions and a manageable agenda. If there is still not enough time, remember the Law of Sacrifice, a leader must give up to go up. What must you give up, in order to achieve your goal?

If we want to achieve a higher level of success, we should add these three questions to our monthly reflection process.

Recently, I had my own barrier that I had to break through. I had so many projects started that I felt I was not making progress. I never compromised time with a client, but I compromised time on every other project I had. So I had to spend some time just thinking. I finally realigned my project list with my long term goals. I delayed some projects, and focused on those with the highest priority. It allowed me to complete some tasks which then allowed me to again revisit my project list and continue progress against my long term goals. Sometimes it just takes looking at a situation from a very high level to create the breakthrough needed.

What is your current barrier? What action do you need to take in order to breakthrough?

John Maxwell of course! The list was published by Inc Magazine, The Top 50 Leadership and Management Experts. John has been my friend and mentor as I developed my coaching, training, and speaking business. I am an original member and founding partner of his team, so it is not a surprise to me to see him in the number one spot.

As I looked through the list, there are many people that have influenced me including Dale Carnegie, Stephen Covey, Simon Sinek, Patrick Lencioni, David Allen, Marcus Buckingham, Jim Collins, and Jeffrey Gitomer.

In 2001, David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, impacted me at a critical point in my life, and really opened my eyes to the world of personal development. The book improved my skills, but it was also a turning point in my reading list. For the first time, I began to read more non-fiction books than fiction books.

I congratulate all the top 100 leaders. I know it was not their goal to be on this list. Their goal is helping others learn and become better.

You may enjoy looking through the list. The Inc. Magazine article is interesting because it includes their method to analyze data and defines the ranking system. You may find it beneficial to know and connect with these leaders, even if it is just by reading a book.

Congratulations John Maxwell for being the number one leadership guru!

We cannot manage time, but we can manage how we spend the time available to us. It seems the older I get, the more I want to do, and the less time I have to do it.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures how Americans spend their time. On average, over 50% of our leisure time is spent watching television. We spend less than half the amount of time on household activities than we do on leisure.

That information is based on averages. If you are reading this, than you are probably also striving to be more proficient with your time than the average person. So what can we do to help us better manage our use of time? Here are three basic steps that we should consider.

1) Know Your Priorities. It would be difficult to measure our productivity if we did not know what we are trying to accomplish. We have priorities based on our work, priorities based on our personal goals, and priorities based on our friends and family. We can fail to step back, look at the bigger picture, and plan to fit these priorities together. Instead we keep them separated and it can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction.

2) Increase Your Focus. Once we know our priorities, it becomes easier to focus our activities. Writing a list of actions, or developing a plan for success becomes straightforward. Once defined, we can focus our time on accomplishment.

3) Increase Your Efficiency. There are many tools that can help us become more efficient. Depending what type of activities that are on our list, we may be able to delegate, put together a team, utilize technology, or simplify our approach. Search for productivity tools, and we will find many, such as, 7 Essential Productivity Tips.

These three steps will help us influence the why, the what, and the how of our own day. If we try to control 100% of our day, we will quickly become discouraged. There will always be distractions and surprises. However, being prepared for our day will make us better prepared for those interruptions.

Our thoughts are biased in many different ways. In fact, Wikipedia defines over 160 different types of cognitive biases. We construct a view of the world in our mind that may be different than how others see it. Everyone can be biased based on how they interpret what they hear, see, and feel. Let’s look at three cognitive biases.

The confirmation bias is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it. A series of experiments in the 1960’s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives.

Another bias is called the decoy effect which is used in marketing very effectively. When we are comparing two similar products we evaluate price and features. By introducing a third option, most people can be guided to selecting one of the first two based on the features and price of the third option.

A third bias is the self-serving bias, which is a bias that distorts our thoughts to help us satisfy our need to maintain our self-esteem. We give more weight to our contributions than contributions of others. We tend to reject negative feedback. It is our way of defending our own self-image.

Cognitive biases are not bad or good. They just are. They alter how you make decisions. Rarely do you ever know the entire story, and the story you are evaluating is the story as you see it. Awareness matters when decision making is critical.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s suppose you were on a team, and all the team members contributed equally to the success of the team. The self-serving bias would allow you to believe that you contributed more than others on the team. Yet, if you are aware of the self-serving bias, you could force yourself to evaluate the situation in more detail. What did they really contribute? What did you really contribute? So being aware of the bias, you can evaluate the situation in a different perspective. If you are not aware, you would make future decisions based on your belief that you contributed more than others.

Cognitive biases are with us all the time. Understanding them can make you a better leader, and a more thoughtful person.