Consistent improvement

This was an unusual take on self-improvement.  These are notes from a business guru who took a unique approach in the endeavor to broaden his mental models.  He took the last 12 years of Discover Magazine and read each of the 6 page in depth discussions of an author's topic.  For example "nanoparticles."  He admitted that if he had chosen which topics to read himself he only would have chosen 14. But the point of it was to read what he wouldn't normally read,  to "broaden" his thinking.
But one of the parts that I liked the best as a reminder was this. He talks about the need for constant increase otherwise, you lose the compounding effect of action.

"Whenever you interrupt the constant increase above a certain level of threshold you lose compounding, you’re no longer on the log curve. You fall back onto a linear curve or God forbid a step curve down. You have to be constant. How many people do you know that are constant and what they do? I know a couple. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Everybody wants to be rich like Warren Buffett Charlie Munger. I’m telling you how they got rich. They were constant. They were not intermittent."

There was also a great segment of the talk where he talks about the incredible value of being positive.  And that you should be the one to "go first" in being positive.  And why don't people do it?

For answering the question, why would people not go positive and not go first when there’s a 98 percent chance you’re going to benefit from it, and only a 2 percent chance the person’s going to tell you to ‘screw off’ and you’re going to feel horrible, lose face, and all the rest of that. And that’s real. That’s why we don’t do it. He said there’s huge asymmetry between the standard human desire for gain and the standard human desire to avoid loss. Which one do you think is more powerful? 98 percent versus 2!

further

Lou Brock set the Major League record for stolen bases with the St. Louis Cardinals many years ago. And he once said, ‘Show me a man who is afraid of appearing foolish and I’ll show you a man who can be beat every time.’ And if you’re getting beat in life, chances are it’s because you’re afraid of appearing foolish. So what do I do with my life? I risk the two percent. I was so proud the other day, I was reading Bono on Bono. Bono’s the lead singer of U2. He’s the only other person I’ve ever encountered in my entire life, and I asked all my cronies, ‘Has anybody else ever encountered this elevator model before?’ ‘No. No that’s yours Peter.’ And I said, ‘You know how I said 98-2? Guess who’s got the exact same model? Bono! Well he doesn’t have 98-2, he’s got 90-10.’