Given how many people I see making the choice of being mediocre--and I say this from an elite university--I would second rwallace. Without wanting to become stronger you lose much of the incentive to be truly rational. Tsuyoku Naritai should be the first thing in your book.

Yes. For myself, I already subscribed to that philosophy (though am happy to see it written down in a form more eloquent than I could've expressed myself) - your OB posts that come to mind from which I learned something I didn't previously know would be the excellent series on quantum mechanics. But that's not relevant to most people (honestly, quantum mechanics isn't of practical relevance to me either, though it is intellectually interesting). Tsuyoku Naritai is in my opinion the one thing from which most people would derive most benefit.