It seems that there is actually no way to get around the halo effect or winner's bias etc. We all look at the winners, we say "how have they done it" and we think "well we can do that too". The problem is in the details. They have done it, we have yet to do it. What worked in the past may not be true in the future. Most of us just slap the LUCK sticker on their series of events and call it a day.
I actually fell in love with "Good To Great" (Jim Collins) because the book tried to make a science out of success. However, reading the Amazon reviews enlightened me to the very real statistics flaw in the entire book's analysis. Something about how there will always be top ranked companies by the simple fact that they are ranked. You have 10 companies. They will fall in rank. Does that really mean anything?
So I think there is indeed a problem in soliciting "how to succeed advice" on the general plane. What works for one person may not work for you, simple as that.
However, rather than get depressed and attribute our happenings to the stars, I think its smarter to believe in and invest in principles.
The richest Man in Babylon is a book of principles. Think and Grow Rich is a book of principles.
I am not saying we should read these books as the gospel, rather acknowledge that there is a real difference between the principle of "saving 10% of your income" and "use google adwords to grow your fb app 1million percent"
So, here's a change: some advice on how to be successful from a guy that is not yet successful:
1. Be a scientist.
Science does not lie.
Sure, things change, sure people get lucky, but all you have to do is test things and keep on testing things. And learn from your tests.
All this advice is just icing on the cake of science.
Be disciplined, be agile, be scrappy, network, manage risk, evolve, blah - what is the actual method you'd use to acquire and optimize these things...?
TEST IT.
Being a part of HN over the last year has been very beneficial for me. If any group of people can understand and embrace the idea of being a scientist relative to EVERYTHING we do, it's HN.