Ricky, I kind of get where you are coming from, but I think you might be surprised to know how many of us are out there laboring in ignorance about the right way to proceed. You state:
”People aren’t gonna master language because they read “The Linguist” and all of a sudden become enlightened to the fact that they need to read and listen a lot.”
Funny as you should say that though, but reading about a different (primarily input based methodology) made a decisive difference in how I pursued my own language goals. Yes, I already had motivation to work and time to do so, but coming across a different perspective on what a language learner should do really changed my thinking. I made very poor progress for years, read about different methodology, enacted it, and proceeded to make amazing progress.
Of course reducing everything to a matter of technique is crazy, but technique is very important. If you consistently fail to have much success after years of poor methods then your motivation will decline. If you make good progress with good methods then your motivation will increase.