But there's a cost to improvement. For example, when do we "improve" our intelligence the most? When we're in school. Then we get jobs and our priorities shift. Sure we still learn, but now we have to balance learning with rote action, because we've achieved a level at which our routine practice produces valuable goods. As our careers progress, the balance shifts further away from learning and toward repetition (or practice), until, at the end, we pretty much only practice what we already know.
Anyway, why do we overlook the obvious cost of improvement and so often pursue it to our detriment? It's obvious that the side effects of improvement are tremendous exertion, fatigue, and poor work, and that our best work comes as a result of practicing at a level we've already achieved.
Bodybuilding related: fitness marketing is built around the idea of "constant improvement" even though people obviously only improve from training for a few years, at most. And the sick part is, bodybuilders, fitness competitors, etc, don't actually compete! It's all "improvement" of capacities that are never used for their ostensible purpose (feats of strength, endurance, etc) but only for marketing purposes.
