I'd like to place myself in this category, even though I'm only 34. My claim to being successful is that I make much more money than I can spend (though we're not talking millions here) doing things I enjoy doing. I largely agree with you, but have some comments:
1. I think my best quality is that I'm lazy. Extremely lazy. Yet still very productive. I achieve this by thinking more about problems before I do anything, which usually greatly reduces the amount of work I actually have to do, because I come up with a better way of doing it. I'm extremely serious here; on a normal working day I'll likely spend more than 50% slacking. My clients don't care, they get charged only for the effective hours. And I love it, because the effective hours become so much more productive that I can charge a lot for them.
4. This matters a lot, especially in communicating to other stakeholders. Nothing is more annoying than someone who promises to do something by date X, only to not hear anything by then.
6. Extremely true. I talk to a lot of people to find work, and generally have a ratio of 10:1 for possible opportunities to things that actually lead to real work. I don't think I can improve this ratio much, because really interesting work is not that readily available.
I'm also not very active in the blogosphere and social media, mostly because that's simply not where my work comes from. My work comes mostly from business people and they care much more about recommendations, being able to talk to them in language they understand, etc.
1. I think my best quality is that I'm lazy. Extremely lazy. Yet still very productive. I achieve this by thinking more about problems before I do anything, which usually greatly reduces the amount of work I actually have to do, because I come up with a better way of doing it. I'm extremely serious here; on a normal working day I'll likely spend more than 50% slacking. My clients don't care, they get charged only for the effective hours. And I love it, because the effective hours become so much more productive that I can charge a lot for them.
4. This matters a lot, especially in communicating to other stakeholders. Nothing is more annoying than someone who promises to do something by date X, only to not hear anything by then.
6. Extremely true. I talk to a lot of people to find work, and generally have a ratio of 10:1 for possible opportunities to things that actually lead to real work. I don't think I can improve this ratio much, because really interesting work is not that readily available.
I'm also not very active in the blogosphere and social media, mostly because that's simply not where my work comes from. My work comes mostly from business people and they care much more about recommendations, being able to talk to them in language they understand, etc.