Some of the best things you’ll ever know will come from a rabbit hole nobody assigned you.

Following something purely because it interests you produces a different kind of knowledge than working through a list somebody handed you. It goes deeper, since nothing stops you where an assignment would have ended, and it lasts longer, since you were not waiting for it to be over. The unassigned material is also where your actual taste lives. That is usually what makes a person distinctive.

Give the next rabbit hole an hour instead of closing it out of guilt. Follow it until the interest genuinely fades. Keep a note of where you have been, because the pattern across several of them tells you something.