No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.

You only improve in rooms you take seriously. Where you feel free to be sloppy, unguarded and unimpressed, nothing sharpens you, because there is no standard you are holding yourself to. A little restraint in good company is the pressure that does the work.

Look at where you spend your evenings and ask which rooms you raise your game for. Add one where the people are better at something than you are and you feel slightly on your mettle. Discomfort of that mild kind is where most improvement quietly happens.