The only way I ever learned anything or built anything of value (one of those things still accounts for most of my revenue, 10-15 years later) was by blowing off doing what I was supposed to be doing at that moment, in the classic sense described by PG here:

https://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

(Except, his essay insinuates that there is some kind of brilliance at work here. In my own case, that remains to be seen.)

Never have I ever managed to accomplish anything of merit by just heading straight for it in the plainspoken sense. Some people will say that provides the basic architecture of some kind of "diagnosis", but I think it's just a normal human variance.

Learning can be the goal if you're lucky. Maybe sharing your learning is the next step and that's enough too. You don't need to apply it to something someone defines as "worthy" for validation.

Learning is not just strictly studying.

I'd say most of the learning is done by actually doing.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm an athlete who trained all day for years, then before my first professional match, I retired and went off to teach PE."