I fall into this trap more than I’d care to admit.

I love learning by reading, to the point that I’ll read the available documentation for something before I decide to use it. This consumes a lot of time, and there’s a tradeoff.

Eventually if I do use the thing, I’m well suited to learning it quickly because I know where to go when I get stuck.

But by the same token I read a lot of documentation I never again need to use. Sometimes it’s useful for learning about how others have done things.

I'm the same, but thing is, 99% of the things I read about (on e.g. HN) are just... not important. I don't use them in my daily life.

But I do have a very large knowledge base of small tidbits of information, so if I do need to ever go in-depth, I know where/how to find it.

...not that I do of course, I struggle with my long term attention span, I can't read documentation front to back and for twenty odd years now have just googled for the tidbit I needed and skipped the rest.