OCTOBER 7 — By any honest measure, success is rare. The reasons, however, are not mysterious.

Ask people what they want, and almost everyone will say the same thing: to be successful. Ask them what they are doing about it, and the answers grow vague.

This gap between aspiration and achievement is one of the oldest puzzles of human life, and one recent study offers a blunt explanation. It identifies four habits that separate those who make it from those who don’t: waiting for the perfect moment, comparing oneself to others, refusing to learn from mistakes, and complaining about life.

These four habits are not the whole story, but they are the part of the story we control. And that is precisely why they matter.