Life is long. You can choose wrong and restart, but you need to go deep on something to get the level of knowledge and experience that will then help you more q

Life is long. You can choose wrong and restart, but you need to go deep on something to get the level of knowledge and experience that will then help you more quickly dive deep on the next thing. As far as that algorithms lecture, it's a case study in learning with a purpose. As an adult, learning something which can then be applied or wrestled with immediately is how you pull value from that lecture. What did you do to reinforce your consumption of the lecture within 72 hours of the lecture? What did you do over the next 12 months? My general advice would be: 1. Identify something you would want to work on even if it wasn't from an engineering standpoint (something that offers the side effect of desire/motivation/focus) 2. Discover your strengths and weaknesses in getting things done by wrestling with understanding the problem and practicing solutions 3. Learn with a purpose in order to build your skills and experience in analysis, design, and implementation of a solution 4. Reflect on what worked or didn't work in steps 1-2-3 for you since everybody is different. You may learn differently. You may discover new things about yourself that change how you approach analysis, implementation, etc. You'll have to practice things others mention like timeboxing, task lists, etc.