I feel the same way, and I like to have an approach I call just-in-time-learning. If you focus on formal education methods you often end up with a lot of time s

I feel the same way, and I like to have an approach I call just-in-time-learning. If you focus on formal education methods you often end up with a lot of time spent in knowledge that's not very interesting to you or that doesn't fall within your work/hobby real needs. In a just-in-time-learning methodology, you roll up your sleeves at the first sign of a lacking area in your knowledge that you need to tackle right now. Of course that isn't without it's own pitfalls. That lacking area might need a bunch of pre-requisite knowledge you also don't have and would do if you had adopted a traditional approach early on. It also may lead you further into the rabbit hole if you don't put a stop to it somewhere along the way and turn back to the original problem. Right now I feel that you have to be able to mix and match the approaches. Reserve some time for just-in-time and rabbit holes, but also remember to reserve some time for fundamentals too, in order to prepare for future lessons. So it is important to do a bit of studying about the subject in order to understand if that's the right fit or not for you. Actually, I think the real drive for any kind of learning is about the same for anyone: curiosity.