Reddit reviews Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals

Some books that come to mind:

• Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals by Heidi Grant Halvorson: a guide to setting goals.
  
• So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport: why "follow your passion" is terrible advice and what to do instead.
  
• The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman: an MBA crash course.
  
• The 80% Approach by Dan Sullivan (short and free): overcome perfectionism; 80% done is good enough.
  
• Learn to Program by Chris Pine (free): a great intro to programming.

I'm currently half-way through Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals where the author explains the results of her own and other studies results. So far, I've been surprised in every chapter.

For example, pessimism can work in your favor and that's particularly the strategy she recommends "when you need a kick in the pants" (chapter 6). How exactly the strategy works and needs to be applied is too much to explain here*. I highly recommend this book, even though I'm only half-way through.

While I appreciate well meaning tips here and in other such threads, how can you be sure that it works? Even if a tip did work for a particular person, how can you know it will for you? How can you know it weren't other circumstances that helped the person in the first place?
What I'm trying to point out is the lack of scientific rigor, that's why I'd like to place a counter-balance with the book that I've mentioned. Hopefully, nobody takes offense. :-)

Good luck to you!

• while the strategy itself is short, it uses several concepts explained throughout the earlier chapters

Good post but it's missing references.

The poster book for Stoicism and productivity mixed together: The Obstacle is the Way

Not sure about the rest but for subjectivity, I'm guessing The Now Habit

Guess for negativity bias Predictably Irrational

Guess for think objectively Succeed

Guess for advice to friends The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I guess this goes to explain my downvote. I'm not really expecting a fully referenced article but it goes to show that either productivity concepts are overrated and can be summed up in one short article or the concepts, as written in the article, is vastly under-represented if not mis-represented.

I'm sure my lone vote won't matter much in the river of upvotes and congrats for giving your site and articles that "Seth Godin" touch but you could do better.