A lot of this is good advice that I wish I had been told earlier, but like a lot of this sort of thing, there are at least two critical problems.
First, a lot of this is in the abstract and the difficult part is how it gets applied in any given situation. For example, there's a lot in it about "successful people maintain a belief in control" but then also a lot about "being able to shift goals is important." Those aren't mutually exclusive, but they can often be in practice, and that conflict of choices is where the true difficulty is.
Second, these sorts of things often have nothing to say about goals or values. That is, it assumes there's some "success" that's implicitly known and agreed to. For example, profit, or holding a certain position or something of that sort. That's all well and good if you are on board with that being your goal, but what happens when your ultimate goal comes into question? What if you get to a certain point and realize that progressing further conflicts with your ethical values? What if you realize that you're on a track that doesn't appeal to you for whatever reason? I think these types of questions are often the most tricky ones.
I'm not saying this sort of text isn't useful -- on the contrary, I would have liked to read this long ago. But often times the sorts of dilemmas people face are one thing dressed up as another.
Regarding control, viewing goals as outcomes that I can influence is changing my life.
An objective is "Be the greatest programmer of all time". The outputs are things like, "Find and read the top 3 most important books on programming." Those can then be broken down further until they are actionable. I find control in the difference between an objective and an output.
A nice habit I can recommend from the article is keeping a notebook of people you want to thank. I keep the notebook so I don't get distracted and don't forget if I remember someone suddenly.
If you do engage in that habit, the idea of output/objective is important to keep in mind. Some people don't respond to gratitude well, or at all. That's not the point though, that's focusing on the outcome which you can only influence not control. You can control the action of writing a note of gratitude to someone you care about. Imagine how nice it feels to receive an unexpected thank you note.
> First, a lot of this is in the abstract and the difficult part is how it gets applied in any given situation.
A lot of these "genre" of books tend to fall into this camp for me. They feel like trying to hold onto sand: sure in the initial moment you have it grasped, but it just as quickly falls away and there's nothing really there to hold onto.
A classic example is one from this list, "Delusional self-confidence causes you to resist change". If you drill into this, it seems like non-delusional self-confidence is what lets you enact control and not simply let life happen to you. In the other case, delusional self-confidence means you are refusing to accept reality and the changes you can't effect. It might be then reformed to "Rational self-confidence causes you to accept change".
What is the take away then? Seems like it's "Don't be delusional / be rational". Which, sure, but that is basically inapplicable and a near truism. If you knew you were in either camp you don't need any of this advice. "Know when you're being rational and when you're being delusional" feels like the general place a lot of stuff like this reduces down to in the end.
I do like the simple compliment / feedback accepting with a "Thank you" one as it's fairly easy to actually do. You will get thrown occasionally when someone wants to dig after the fact however.
First, a lot of this is in the abstract and the difficult part is how it gets applied in any given situation. For example, there's a lot in it about "successful people maintain a belief in control" but then also a lot about "being able to shift goals is important." Those aren't mutually exclusive, but they can often be in practice, and that conflict of choices is where the true difficulty is.
Second, these sorts of things often have nothing to say about goals or values. That is, it assumes there's some "success" that's implicitly known and agreed to. For example, profit, or holding a certain position or something of that sort. That's all well and good if you are on board with that being your goal, but what happens when your ultimate goal comes into question? What if you get to a certain point and realize that progressing further conflicts with your ethical values? What if you realize that you're on a track that doesn't appeal to you for whatever reason? I think these types of questions are often the most tricky ones.
I'm not saying this sort of text isn't useful -- on the contrary, I would have liked to read this long ago. But often times the sorts of dilemmas people face are one thing dressed up as another.