Start by questioning every aspect of your life, your actions, your intentions, your thoughts - why are they the way they are? Books and mental models are mere tools that won't get you anywhere, they just add to the conditioning and the "burden" of knowledge. To find your own philosophy of life you have to start by unconditioning your mind so you can become sensitive to the reality as it is and not what the world around you has taught you.
Just finished it last week, it made me revisit the idea of "What it means to have meaning in life?" and how personal that is, and have a wholesome view of my personality without any prejudice.
If you can, try getting a Sales/Partnership role for an early stage B2B startup. Pitching to CXOs of different bossinesses would push you to be coherent, concise, and confident about what's coming out of your mouth.
Just be ultra honest about the point you want to make with supporting evidence/arguments without being disrespectful. The way you speak to your manager doesn't necessarily have to the same you speak to your CEO, because their motivations may differ (usually do). Speaking to CEO, you should try to be aligned with the company goals, whatever you're speaking about try to connect with company's goals. At the end of the day, that is all CEO cares about. However, manager might have ulterior motives, politics etc. So here you formulate your points without causing too much trouble or insecurity to their position.
1) Find the equivalent of Schaum's in any domain, a book of problems with worked answers.
2) Grind through a bunch of representative problems without studying. Just give it your best shot, you might be able to figure it out.
3) Check your answers and use this as a form of placement test to identify deficiencies.
4) Specifically, if you're getting the complex questions right, you understand the domain. If not, go back to the source material and read it. You'll have a new focus in reading it as you know exactly what you got wrong and you know what points to fix.
Doing it this way is (IMO) the most efficient way of spending your learning time. First do problems with worked answers to find out what you don't know, then fill the gap with focused effort.
