I spent 2017 interviewing highly successful people like Tony Robbins, Reid Hoffman, and Ray Dalio — here are the best lessons they taught me

Graham Flanagan/Business Insider

• As a Business Insider reporter, I've interviewed many entrepreneurs, CEOs, and academics about leadership and personal growth.
• Sometimes I adopt the best insights into my own life.
• This year I learned how to be a better colleague and how to best view my career path.

If you're reading this right now, you may have read some advice-based Strategy stories on Business Insider or other outlets — things like how to lead teams better or why you should meditate every morning.

As someone who's written many of those, I know that they can come across as human-interest stories (for example, "This Navy SEAL wakes up at 4:30 a.m.," but, sorry, I'm not going to do that). And yet other times they can really resonate with you, and you can't get a particular insight out of your head.

When I look back at 2017 and the interviews I did with people like life coach Tony Robbins or LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, I can see how many of the insights they shared with me did just that, and led to new routines and ways of approaching my career.

I've collected those lessons that most resonated with me and distilled them to their key takeaways.

LinkedIn founder and Greylock investor Reid Hoffman said a strong network is more valuable than a thorough career plan.

Who you know will prove to be more valuable than just your ambition, Hoffman told me in an interview for our podcast, "Success! How I Did It."

"And so, as opposed to saying, 'I have a master plan,'" he said, you're better off focusing more energy on building "as strong a network as possible, because that's the thing that most catapults you, in terms of your capabilities, in terms of your abilities to do things."

To accomplish this, he said, you have to become a "central node" in a network, where you are adding value to the people who can move your career forward.

Life coach Tony Robbins demonstrated the power of routine.

As the world's most famous life coach, Tony Robbins not only has personal clients like billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones with whom he checks in daily, but he also tours the world giving presentations and running events that regularly include 16-hour days.

He's been doing this for about 40 years now. And even though he's now 57, he told me that implementing strict routines into his daily schedule have allowed him to be busier than he was when his energy came more easily.

Each morning, Robbins spends 10 minutes meditating and reflecting on what he is grateful for, and then spends 15 minutes in a compact but intense workout.

While I haven't mimicked Robbins' exact routine, I've realized there's no reason not to carve out at least 30 minutes every morning for the sake of mental and physical health.

Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio said that anyone can benefit from a degree of 'radical transparency.'

Ray Dalio built Bridgewater Associates into the largest hedge fund in the world, with roughly $150 billion in total assets under management, but he may be more recognizable for the controversial management philosophy he's instilled into all of his employees.

After stepping down from daily management responsibilities in March, Dalio began a phase of his career in which he passed on this philosophy to the public.

I spoke with Dalio in September when he was promoting his book "Principles: Life and Work," and he said that he wants his legacy to be inspiring people to use "radical truth" and "radical transparency" in their personal and professional lives in order to make better decisions and form more honest relationships.

While I certainly don't want to work in an office where all meetings are recorded and my performance in meetings is graded in real time by my peers — as things go over at Bridgewater — I do understand the core of Dalio's desire: that playing disingenuous office politics is a slippery slope, and that honesty with your bosses and coworkers, even when it's uncomfortable, is always the better option.