I spent four years learning as fast as I could. It almost worked. Almost.
I switched languages because a job listing looked interesting. I crammed courses on weekends. I did LeetCode in Python even though I wrote PHP at work. Every new ticket at work was a reason to learn something on the fly, just fast enough to close it and move to the next one.
That was pretty much my whole approach to learning for four years. From convincing the CTO to give me a dev role, to keeping up with tickets once I got it, to applying for jobs abroad. Every stage meant learning faster, wider, more scattered.
And it did work.
I went from material engineer to support engineer to developer. But I was learning things just long enough to use them and forgetting them by next week. I wasn't really understanding anything. I was just keeping up.
At some point I sat down to study after work, and I couldn't remember why I was studying that specific thing. I just knew I should be studying something. That was the moment I realised I was tired. Not of learning. Of running.
So I started looking for an exit.
Not to stop, but to slow down. I got a job on a small startup, Laravel and Vue.js, the stack I actually wanted to go deep on. For the first time I can take a step back and give a small topic some space every day. Read it. Sit with it. Hope to use it and remember it.
That's the whole method now.