Lots of good ideas here and I'm probably going to experiment with some of them as I more deliberately build out my own process. I have one major gripe that I t

Lots of good ideas here and I'm probably going to experiment with some of them as I more deliberately build out my own process. I have one major gripe that I think is worth pointing out: it may behoove you to be more selective in applying this rigorous treatment, if you aren't already. You sort of touched on this with your ideas about sampling books before committing, realizing that most stuff is probably not worth reading. Similarly, most knowledge is not worth running through a high friction retention process. Every unit of time you dedicate to a particular learning task has an opportunity cost. There's a roughly multiplicative factor applied to this cost per task with every additional layer in your retention process. You really want just enough process to get close to an optimal point on the tradeoff between 'exploiting' particular knowledge versus 'exploring' other things. The above is also why I've started to conceptualize the learning process as a funnel. At the top end is inbound content in the form of books, blog posts, videos, etc. The bottom is what becomes indelible learning and enhances understanding. There are several stages in this funnel and what flows through each stage should narrow (both naturally and as a consequence of process) as you progress. With this in mind, I would argue that there should be at least one or two intermediate funnel stages between inbound content and the process you've described.