You could try writing down actual goals where you want to be at 1 month, at 1 year, in 5 years. Then unravel into tasks from there. Without a plan I end up doing nothing.
Like Julia has sciml youtube lectures showing the guy doing all kinds of optimization to improve the libraries for HPC but he had a specific goal why he's doing that, he runs a startup pumas.ai
For me it was basic competency
at Y subject I was very interested as first goal, find a mentor and work beside them for Y subject (second goal) finally become an expert at Y to freelance and I wrote all that down years ago because I too was just aimless and dabbling then giving up.
To find a mentor I had to impress them first to make it worth their time so that was motivating to slog through all the fundamentals in the beginning. Normally I would've given up here because who on earth wants to deep dive logical relations unless there's a good reason. Working was then a motivator too because I was given tasks to figure out with deadlines so there was urgency and focus so the person I chose as a mentor would actually keep teaching me.
Before that I would take interesting thing, that thing goes into the weeds to teach foundations and I gave up bored chasing new thing and repeat with no direction at all.
Like Julia has sciml youtube lectures showing the guy doing all kinds of optimization to improve the libraries for HPC but he had a specific goal why he's doing that, he runs a startup pumas.ai
For me it was basic competency at Y subject I was very interested as first goal, find a mentor and work beside them for Y subject (second goal) finally become an expert at Y to freelance and I wrote all that down years ago because I too was just aimless and dabbling then giving up.
To find a mentor I had to impress them first to make it worth their time so that was motivating to slog through all the fundamentals in the beginning. Normally I would've given up here because who on earth wants to deep dive logical relations unless there's a good reason. Working was then a motivator too because I was given tasks to figure out with deadlines so there was urgency and focus so the person I chose as a mentor would actually keep teaching me.
Before that I would take interesting thing, that thing goes into the weeds to teach foundations and I gave up bored chasing new thing and repeat with no direction at all.