No one is more invested in getting better than you. You read books. You have a mentor. You even have a business coach. You go to work conferences. You go to the gym. You have hobbies that you watch videos about, that you have goals for. You have a financial advisor. You put in long hours.

It’s all very impressive.

But is it really??

Marcus Aurelius was all for optimization and improvement. He too had the best experts in his corner, he too worked long hours. He just wanted to be sure all this effort was pointed at the right goal. Because it’s so easy to get distracted or consumed by superficial improvements. It was easy, he said, to become a better wrestler, a better speaker of rhetoric, a better lawyer, a better hunter, a better tactician. But did that really matter? No, it didn’t. What mattered, he said, was becoming, “a better citizen, a better person, a better resource in tight places, a better forgiver of faults.”

All the time and money you’ve put into yourself is great, but if you’re honest, isn’t the vast majority of that directed at your career? Or your appearance? Or pleasure? Imagine what you could become–how much better the world would be–if you put that energy into true self-improvement, if you put it towards improving as a parent, as a neighbor, as a citizen.