The book
Samuel Smiles published Self-Help in 1859, from lectures he had been giving to young working men. The opening line is the book: heaven helps those who help themselves. What follows is biography used as evidence. Inventors, engineers, merchants, people who continued after the first refusal.
Character as a practice: industry, perseverance, self-culture, the use of time, the refusal to wait for a patron. Smiles is not interested in a change of thought that does not show up as work. The chapters are long on examples because the example is the argument. A person did the thing, under worse conditions than yours, and the conditions were not the point.
Allen gives you the weaver. Smiles gives you the repeated piece of work. The session picks one example that is actually parallel, names the part that is not parallel, and asks what the repeated piece is this week. "Be more disciplined" is not an answer he would have counted.
The risk with Smiles is moralising. The edition should not hand you a great man's childhood as a verdict on yours. The usable extract is the cadence: what was done daily.
It will not be a short book. If you wanted forty pages and one image, Allen is the claim. Smiles is the book when agreement has already failed you and you need the work named.
Claim it on the book page. Self-Help.