[jjk166]

XKCD's comic is a very simple graphic that tells you whether your automation efforts will reduce the total amount of time for a task.

If your goal is not to reduce time spent, why would you be looking at a chart to determine how much time you're reducing?

Learning is a very good use of time. Choosing to spend extra time to automate something for the sake of learning is a perfectly rational decision. But it's never harmful to know what your choice is costing you. If you wouldn't be willing to automate something in the full knowledge that it's going to take longer than just doing it manually, then the comic is succeeding in stopping you from making a choice you wouldn't want to make.

[arcfour]

My boss would probably prefer—thinking short-term—that I work by that chart. I would prefer to learn something new, and it usually pays off in the long-term, possibly years from now in unexpected and unforeseeable ways.

[banku_brougham]

Yup if I followed team/management guidance I would be nowhere.

[jjk166]

"This may help in unexpected and unforeseeable ways" doesn't sound like the most convincing argument for taking time from your job to learn a new skill.

All the same, you are choosing to learn something new, not to automate something to save time. Learning something new by automating a task which doesn't justify automation is no different from say reading a book or doing coding exercises in the same time - it's potentially a good use of your time, it just doesn't relate to the xkcd chart at all.