Pick of the Week: IBD 10 Secrets to Success

I don't normally pay much attention to lists that claim to hold the secrets of success. They tend to make one of two basic errors:

The first error is that they tend to be faddish and heavy on wishful thinking--focused on the bright business idea of the moment or pushing the ideas of a particular leadership guru who is hyping his or her latest book.

The second error is that they are often just the personal credo of some successful person. This means that they are prone to the correlation/causation fallacy. Just because a successful person has a particular list of traits does not mean that those traits led to his or her success or that they will work for the rest of us.

The Investor's Business Daily newspaper, on the other hand, has a list of ten "secrets" that I think are worth attention (the list can be found here). What I like about this list is that they are not secrets at all, and they don't offer simple, magical solutions. They are common sense guidelines that if you follow, and if you work hard, and if you are just a little bit lucky, will increase your chances of accomplishing your goals.

IBD also publishes articles each day based on one of these secrets, and they're available free online (click here).