Most of the figures in this group come from one tradition: the literature of personal success that runs from Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (1937) through Og Mandino in the 1960s to today's books on habits. It is the most widely read writing about work there is, and almost none of it has been tested. The group is worth studying for exactly that combination.
What the tradition claims
Hill supplied several of the entries: Definiteness of Purpose, the Burning Desire Principle, the Mastermind Principle, persistence and specialised knowledge. Mandino added habit substitution, present action and the case against excessive deliberation. Later writers contributed the specific goal, the influence of the people one spends time with, and the compounding of very small improvements. The shared message is that achievement follows from the right inner state and the right daily practice.
The tradition's claims are unusually consistent across eighty years, and so is its evidence: interviews with successful people, anecdotes chosen after the fact, and the author's own story. That method cannot tell a cause of success from a feature of people who succeeded, because the equally purposeful and persistent people who failed are not in the sample.
What survives testing
The interesting finding in this group is how often a researched relative sits behind a self-help principle. Goal-setting research supports a narrower version of the specific-goal principle. Self-efficacy supports a narrower version of belief in one's own capacity. Habit research supports the idea that a response is easier to replace than to suppress, and peer-effects studies find real if modest influence from the people around us. The popular version is usually larger, simpler and more certain than the research, but it is rarely made of nothing.
The sceptics
A handful of entries push the other way. Sturgeon's Law, that ninety per cent of everything is crud, was a science-fiction writer's reply to critics of his genre, and it applies to self-help as well as anything. They Pretend to Pay Us, the Soviet workplace saying that ends with the workers pretending to work, treats effort as a bargain rather than a virtue. Hlade's Law credits laziness with finding the easier method. Protection from Editors observes that success itself can remove the people able to say no, and quality falls.
Where it applies
The practical use of this group is as a reading guide. Faced with a principle from the success literature, a reader can ask two questions. Is there a researched version of it, and how much smaller is that version than the claim? And would the people who followed the advice and failed show up anywhere in the evidence offered? The first question usually saves the useful core of the advice. The second usually explains why the book sounds more certain than it should.
The sceptical entries have direct uses of their own. Sturgeon's Law is a reason to curate rather than to judge a field by its average. They Pretend to Pay Us is a warning to any employer who cuts pay and expects effort to stay where it was.
Where it is argued over
The whole tradition is contested, which is why nearly every entry here carries the flag. Hill's account of his own sources has been questioned. The remark that eighty per cent of success is showing up circulates in versions Woody Allen has said misread him. The Atomic Improvement Principle relies on arithmetic that assumes gains compound, where most skills show diminishing returns. Defenders of the tradition reply that its readers want motivation rather than proof, and that the advice does no harm. Critics reply that telling people success follows from belief implies that failure follows from its absence.
Why it is worth knowing
Far more people have read Hill than any study of motivation, so these ideas shape how many people think about their own work. Knowing where each principle came from, what version of it has been tested, and who is missing from its evidence turns the success literature from a set of instructions into a set of hypotheses, some of which hold up.
The entries behind this essay: Figure in Creativity & Work. Every subject has its essays on the essays page.