@GothicChessInventor
There's knowing what to do and not do, and there's putting it into practice. Those points you made are obvious, but it's not as if a total novice could read them and seamlessly incorporate them into his play.
There's something to be said for playing thousands of games, over and over, and making mistakes over and over, until eventually you can actually use what you know.
Yeah, I'm only 1600, but with your strength I could probably be helpful looking over a game if you want to send one my way.
Also, for anyone who says speed chess does nothing, it's not that simple. I'm averaging like 0.03 Elo gained per 3|0 game played (just over 10,000 of them). So- OK. That's 44 hours of chess, which is a lot. Probably could have spent that time in a better way if improving were my only goal. You do get better by playing 3|0 (probably not much faster than that), but you won't see results in 10 games, 100 games, 500 games. It takes literally thousands.