I agree with the others that Tarot has so many benefits simply from a learning perspective. My doubts were really on the usefulness of readings rather than of Tarot as a whole.
I will address this addendum rather than the title of the post, which speaks to tarot more broadly and has elicited the several useful answers you've already received on the point.
The question of how beneficial I find tarot
self-readings is a salient one for me, and one I've asked myself many times over the years when wondering why I do them so rarely. As Asbestos Mango said above, increasing the frequency of my readings has forced me to write down (or type up as it were) the details of my life, and that is something of value to me, as I've confirmed every time I come across an old journal or hand-written log of tarot readings from years past and read it with great interest.
But that is still a general way that self-readings have improved my life, and you want to get down to brass tacks.
However I wanted to have more tangible advice. The constructive advice given just seems too vague to act on. Maybe I'm just expecting too much from it?
My answer is two-fold:
1. The onus is on the individual reader to glean whatever more concrete and "tangible" advice he or she wants. If you are reading about what you can do to improve your outlook in X or Y situation and you come up with several Wands from the RWS, you could interpret that in generalities ("be more proactive;" "show leadership;" "don't back down"), or you could choose to get more specific and mundane, interpreting the images on a more literal level (3 of Wands--wait three week/months, etc; it will benefit you to travel to the coast or sea, etc).
2. I don't expect what you do from the tarot, so I'm not disappointed in that regard. I have never seen it as something that, in my hands as a reader, offers more than broad advice. I knew other readers, especially those reared in a more fortune-telling school of thought, might glean many specifics from the cards, but given where my interests lie in tarot, I did not hold any expectations of receiving highly detailed, "go down to the riverside on the third week of May" instructions.
The other thing is that my interest in self-readings themselves has never been great to begin with. This may be because I viewed tarot primarily as a tool for problem-solving and brainstorming and because I already have a cadre of sensible advisers in my life with whom I discuss problems from different perspectives; by the time we finished systematically analyzing a dilemma, there wasn't much organic want or need for me to read the cards about it.
But I have recently increased my self-readings for a variety of reasons ranging from the "enforced journaling" effect to an increased desire to interact with all the decks in my collection, to seeking insight on topics I cannot broach with the esteemed cadre described above.
I just don't expect what you seem to, so I can't say I'm disappointed with the self-readings.
Just wish I had the discipline and time management skills to do them more consistently. The trouble is that for me, "doing" a reading entails writing up not only the cards drawn but what amounts to a journal entry about my thoughts, life, circumstances, etc.
