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There's an (almost obvious) secret to making quantum leaps in your understanding about a subject VERY FAST - at least the theory/intellectually. You can't do without it if you want to be world class at something, so this is also an overpowered hack for developing skills, too. The Pareto'd version of this is to pick either 2-5 books about the topic, depending on your level of dedication. The key is to pick the books well (get help from AI w this, or ask on a forum/an expert, etc - they'd usually know). Assuming you'll read 3 books, this should be the team: 1. First book should be the "best" book that's widely known, if you ask anyone practising this, they'd tell you to read this one about it. Right edition of the canonical textbook, or the field founder's primary book, etc all go here. Most papers or people would reference this, etc. You know the one. Read it & read it well. 2. Second book is more like a "practitioner's guide" type thing. If it's an old field, you might want to read however the new experts are approaching it, one of the "new canon" books could go here. I really like "teacher's guide" type of books, here. How to teach X to people, groups, how to practice this, secrets of X, what I would've done differently if I started X again, rare talks to the initiated, etc. Very valuable. 3. Third book is the "underground" type. Most fields either have a "wizkid who went dark" type story, or a practitioner who became anti, or some groundbreaking book that tells the inner secrets of the field, maybe a correspondence compilation, fringe book about this, whatever. Find the dark sheep book and read that one. These 3 types should give you an almost-360 view of the whole field, the whole thing and different perspectives in it. You'd probably have lesser, but harder to answer questions about the field. If this is something that can be practiced, a skill etc, ideally you'd practice alongside w the reading so you could have a much better understanding. Coming up with hypotheses, different experiments, trying moonshots or unlikely things, etc should all accompany the process if you want to make real leaps. Obviously the "hours put in" is the most important metric to begin with, but the real multiplier there is if you can attack it from all angles and make it fun and interesting. So, ideally you'd maximize the exploration/fun/interestingness/angles count with the intensity/reps count, and so on. The weird thing, since no one really cares almost anything that deeply nowadays, is that once you go through this process, you'll have a hard time finding people you can actually relate to, in the field. You'll see people getting PhDs and have "practising for the past 40 years" and haven't made ANY real leaps except some tiny grain sized and you'll feel "What have you been doing?!" - but you'll get along very well w the actually passionate people doing this, which is the point anyways. And maybe I should've written this at the top, but it's critical and no one does this: Before you pick a skill or a topic, unless you feel absolutely called to and/or it's absolutely clear to you - just ask yourself, what do you want out of this? And really inquire into it. Ask around, etc.. Because there might be another, easier way(s) to get that thing. This is the highest leverage and easiest shift to make, and if you get this wrong, it's the costliest. So you have to run that script every single time.