Why?
1. Truth be told, many highly successful people are so busy doing WHAT they do best that they do not truly know or understand HOW they do it. Introspection, if it comes at all, tends to come late in life.
2. Most “advice,” even when good, is usually obvious and already known: e.g. work hard, follow your passion, set goals. Any benefit in hearing it from an highly successful person lies in the greater emotional weight we might attach to it, the more importance we might assign to it. The gate of change takes but a moment to walk through, getting ready to walk through takes as long as you wish. Most of us do not need advice, we simply need to start doing as well as we already know.
3. Everyone is unique, every situation is different, times change. What is the right path for them may be totally wrong for you. Knowing that Edison thought naps revitalized him is incredibly specific to his physiology and emotional make up.
Closing quotes:
“When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.” — Josh Billings; 1818–1885, pen name of humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw
“We only make a dupe of the friend whose advice we ask, for we never tell him all; and it is usually what we have left unsaid that decides our conduct.” — Diane de Poitiers; 1499-1566, French noblewoman, prominent courtier at courts of Francis I & his son, Henry II of France.
“I give myself, sometimes, admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.” — Mary Wortley Montagu; 1689-1762, English aristocrat, known particularly for her letters from Turkey, as wife to the British ambassador,
“A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.” — Edgar Watson Howe; 1853-1937, novelist, newspaper and magazine editor
“The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.; 1809-1894, dean of Harvard Medical School