[darkkindness]

Key insight IMO:

> You can talk the talk like a champ, and be up with the latest buzz, but in some corner of your mind you may recognize that your basic skills are fundamentally lacking.

Learning for learning's sake is admirable, and it's easy to snub practical application. But it's much like how you can only read a few thousand books in your life -- the modern world is so full of novelties that you must carefully choose what you learn. There is an inherent opportunity cost in all learning.

My personal razor for deciding what's not worth learning is: if I can't justify teaching others what I've learned, it's probably not worth learning.

[partyboat1586]

I find it so hard to choose since almost everything is fascinating to me. I'm terribly afraid that if I commit to any one school of anything I will miss the truth buried elsewhere. I find it easy if I have a fixed end goal to pick the most pragmatic options but outside of that I'm lost.