I find it very inefficient, trying to learn things, ‘for the sake of learning’. You try to consume information with no goal in sight of how you will use it.
I have adopted a very serious mind set switch to project based learning. Since I am a big fan of mind maps, I have a personal mind map just for that. A mind map named projects that I can very quickly open with just a single keystroke. In there I outline the projects that I want to work on and complete. Projects is the root mind map of all that I do and everything stems from it in my world. For example ‘learning’ and ‘books that I want to read’ are two projects that I love doing and allocate quite a lot of my time towards but they are still projects and since they are projects, I have to manage them smartly and allocate the correct time for these projects given the context of what I want to achieve and do.
Learning how much time to allocate and more importantly to which projects to allocate this time is an art. An art that pays very high dividends if you do it right. I am still learning this art.