I am always suspicious of advice based on studies of "what successful people do" because there is a high potential for false causality, and for inapplicability to other people's lives. I suspect that many of these habits of successful people are simply side effects of the way that their minds work, and that they may not work for someone whose mind works differently. Ripe bananas are yellow, but painting a green banana yellow does not ripen it.
I will speculate as to how it might be that being successful is correlated with looking forward, even if that is not an inherent fact: the "to-do list" is a familiar, well-known concept, while the "done list" is not. So if you're motivated by the future, you have a ready-made tool that will make you more successful. If you're motivated by your recent accomplishments, you have no such tool - and you may even make things worse by using a future-motivating tool that is not effective for you.
Like I said, this is speculation and hypothesis. But I will say from experience that it is often the case that person A has a habit that seems effective, and person B sees no benefit from adopting that habit.
I will speculate as to how it might be that being successful is correlated with looking forward, even if that is not an inherent fact: the "to-do list" is a familiar, well-known concept, while the "done list" is not. So if you're motivated by the future, you have a ready-made tool that will make you more successful. If you're motivated by your recent accomplishments, you have no such tool - and you may even make things worse by using a future-motivating tool that is not effective for you.
Like I said, this is speculation and hypothesis. But I will say from experience that it is often the case that person A has a habit that seems effective, and person B sees no benefit from adopting that habit.