What you study when nobody’s grading you tells you who you’re becoming.

Unsupervised attention is the most honest record of a person. Required work tells you what someone was assigned; voluntary work tells you what they would do with a free afternoon and no reward, which is closer to identity than any stated ambition. Nobody sustains interest in something for years purely out of strategy.

Look at the last month of your own free hours and name what you actually spent them learning. No judgment about whether it is impressive. Then give that thing one deliberate hour this week instead of letting it survive only on leftovers.