[Question] Silman's "imbalances"; Its place in chess

With the little bit of time that i have, I'm still in the process of transitioning my chess play from mainly raw calculation to a more strategic approach. I'm making progress but I have come to a full halt in my chess "career".

Recently I have encountered a book authored by Silman (forgot first name), a 4th edition which covers "imbalances". I hear this terminology more often on Chess.com.

My question(s): is his approach (imbalances) the standard now?

Currently I'm learning from GM Smirnov's "The GMs Positional Understanding" and "7 KEYS TO VICTORY" (they overlap quite), but I feel I'm missing a more comprehensive tool to assess a position and develop a plan based on it. It's still good material though.

So what is the current state of affairs? I need to pick up the pace a bit.

Balanced positions are always to be disturbed. Especially if your opponent comes up with some bizarre idea, some sort of trump, like a frog out of the trumpet

Jeppe Eisner, The clown and the rope-walker

Dobar dan bro

The book in question seems to cause a divide among people on different chess forums.  For the most part, I would say 2/3 really like it, while 1/3 really hate it.  People I know (in person) that have read it said that it really improved their game.  If you look at the table of contents of several different positional chess books (pick your favorite online book site), they all appear to discuss the same concepts.  Not having read HTRYC (by Jeremy Silman), my only guess on the difference is the presentation style.  

Hoi, my friend,

I know how you feel about that improvement. We all hit an invisible wall

Need to code your chess brain right

Well, I studied very hard for the past two days and must say Silman is full of it. What I mean with that is that he packages well known positional concepts in a slick package of "planning". But it doesn't work that way. Nobody thinks the way he proposes in his book. Just observe the endless streams of masters - nobody talks like that. Of course they mention explicitly one or the other imbalance, but it's rare if they would organize an entire strategy around it.

GM Igor Smirnov has actually better books despite his sleazy way of marketing. His "7 keys to victory" and "Your Winning Plan" are examples of better stuff. In the latter book he proposes to form a plan based on the type of centre.

I thank the two people who have responded in this thread.