I felt that many news, tweets, YouTube videos, blogs and forum / aggregators are constantly to trying to engage my attention. As a result, I struggle to know what are the things that I truly find it engaging.
Everything seems engaging to me because they looks new and something that I don’t know. But I seldom have any sustainable engagement with these resources. Therefore, I should not use these resources as a measurement of what I truly want to engage in.
Instead, I should try to study and practice the foundations of these resources that I am often trying to look into. Only with a sustainable study of these foundational fields, then you can truly know what engages you the most.
The “question” heuristic
How do you know what truly engages you? Use the simple heuristic: If you have many questions while studying the fields, the chances are that this field of work engages you the most compare to other fields.
You might also find other fields to be engaging as well but not something you want to deep-dive. In that case, you should treat them as breadth studies (just by knowing the fundamental principles should be sufficient).
Beware of judging that a field is not something that engages you just because you have no questions while doing an initial study.
There is also a possibility that you are using the wrong resource to study (that is why you don’t even know what to ask to find out more). A good resource brings out more questions from your mind. Or you are missing some knowledge or real life experience to ask any questions. Thus, you cannot pre-maturely judge that the subject does not engage you because you have no questions now.
But if you have done a thorough study and yet the questions are not flowing out of your mind, the chances are that the field is not engaging enough to your current life context.