[toiletduck]

The difficulty of the article and of your example is active vs passive learning - watching and reading people with more experience is important, and I guess the spirit of the article is to do that actively without procrastinating - real learning - watch and make notes rather than just relax and passively watch/read.

However, the part not touched on is that things you do passively do build up knowledge too - and it's not an exertion like active learning is. Absentmindedly watching Chess streams when relaxing is good to call out as not an intentional active learning experience, but as long as you're treating it as relaxing it's the kind of thing that is fuel for shower thoughts and can refuel capacity for active learning. As the article says, the "real thing" is hard and tiring, and doing "fake things" can add depth to understanding as well as recuperate for the next struggle. Being mindful and aware of what you're doing and pushing yourself to be doing the real thing when possible is my takeaway from the article.