[greenshackle2]

"Mr. Potter, one of the requisites for becoming a powerful wizard is an excellent memory. The key to a puzzle is often something you read twenty years ago in an old scroll"

I skim technical books that are not immediately useful to i) build a mental index and ii) fill the gap of my unknown unknowns.

When I hit a problem, sometimes much later, I won't remember the details, but I'll remember that there is a concept that could help me, and know where to look to find more information.

For example, I've read much more about low level networking and messaging than was immediately useful at the time. Months later, a messaging pattern I read about turned out to be a good solution to a problem I was facing. If I hadn't read the book I wouldn't even have known what to search for.

(I also read about some technical topics more deeply for my own enjoyment/future career prospects, but the value of that is more uncertain.)