Intelligence isn't just about what you know. It is also the ability to avoid being your own bottleneck. • If you lack the skills, be willing to look… - James Clear

The Cycle of Improvement:

1. Awareness – identify what you need to improve.
2. Deliberate practice – focus your conscious effort on the specific area you want to improve.
3. Habit – with practice, the effortful becomes automatic.
4. Repeat – begin again.

This is why remaining part of a group after achieving a goal is crucial to maintaining your habits. It’s friendship and community that embed a new identity and help behaviors last over the long run.

Whether a decision is good or bad can change based on how you act after the choice is made.

You can't learn all the lessons beforehand. You learn a lot about what you want in a marriage after getting married. You discover what type of career you enjoy after doing a lot of work. And so it goes in nearly every area of life. In many cases, what you wish you knew ahead of time can only be learned after the decision is made.

So there is nothing left but to pay attention to what you like, continue to iterate, and commit to making the most of each opportunity. There is no perfect decision. Good decisions are made right after the fact.