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Most of us who learn (and always learned) outside of schools and academia, do so for some purpose and with some intention beyond the learned thing. I didn't learn programming to learn programming, I learned it because that's how you built websites. I didn't learn woodworking just to learn woodworking, but in order to build my own furniture, and so on.

Same can be applied here I'd say, and probably must (at least for me) be applied that way, for the learning to even be engaging. So don't learn physics just to learn physics, but learn it in order to be able to execute on something else, then learn the related parts to that.

Then the verification becomes part of what you're doing, and fun as well, as you're progressing on other stuff :)

Of course, YMMV and all that.

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I think you're possibly generalising your own experience to the masses. That's absolutely not the case for me.

I love learning to learn. I learned programming because I found a quick basic compiler / IDE on my dad's computer, along with some shipped examples, and it was actually magic to me.

I read our encyclopedias as a kid because it was just really cool. Likewise, I did physics in university not for a job (the jobs are shit), but because it gives me that feeling of expansive possibility and wonder that Carl Sagan gave me when I watched Cosmos growing up.

Most of my most passionate self learnings came about because of that feeling of magic, not because I was chasing an end goal.

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> I think you're possibly generalising your own experience to the masses

Yeah, that's fair and probably true, it's limited to my own experience and the experiences of the people around me, not gonna claim it's universal so you're right.

> I did physics in university [...]

My comment is also explicitly not about you and your type ;)

> Most of my most passionate self learnings came about because of that feeling of magic, not because I was chasing an end goal

One could argue that the end goal you were chasing was feeling that magic again :) Jest aside, I do understand what you mean.