Much of my non-technical reading is geared towards personal improvement and expanding my thinking. Whenever there’s a lapse in my reading or habits that drive me forward, my awareness is re-awakened to the fact that there’s so much that I’m not doing.

This touches everything from how I’m communicating with customers to how I’m goal-setting to how I’m thinking about problems to how I relate to the world around me. There are emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual implications.

This brings me to the idea of my “resting rate of improvement” which predictably drops to zero when I fall out of the habit of [insert habit that moves me towards my goals].

And the point of all this is to 1) reach a level of progress and improvement below which I never fall and 2) reduce the likelihood that I fall off the horse in the first place.

[You could also make the case for a third item, which would be mitigating the impact of the second item, and how to lose as few cycles as possible in the interim.]