From my old blog:

Я никогда не могла понять, почему так мало людей не могут мне ответить на вопрос: “Чего ты хочешь?” Это серьезно какой-то баг в большинстве людей. Свои цели на будущее нужно осознавать предельно четко, и периодически вспоминать о них. (с) М.

“Keeping options open” often means “not being successful in anything” ((https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-decide-what-to-do-when-you-are-multitalented-and-want-to-have-all-of-it/answer/Shulamit-Widawsky))

W/o sources:

Whenever Jobs suffered a setback, it wasn’t too long before he was looking forward and thinking about what he should do next.

“What’s the point in looking back,” he told me in one email. “I’d rather look forward to all the good things to come.”- Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, Becoming Steve Jobs

Celebrate other people’s success and you’ve accomplished, but raise the bar a little higher each time you succeed.

Refuse to accept that something is beyond your understanding. Sometimes, you have to learn a set of special codes and symbols to get at the knowledge you want. You cannot allow language acquisition, whether of spoken  communication or a set of mathematical, electric, or other scientific code, to daunt you.

First find a good direction, and once you’re sure you’re going the right direction, start going faster. First be resultative, then increase productivity; Success is measured in output of value, not input of effort. + http://www.arhivstatey.ru/articles/organizer/index.html