1) First, congrats on getting off TikTok. My thesis is that in 20 years we’ll look back at these apps the same way we look at old Camel cigarette ads, the ones “recommended by doctors.”

2) Second, thanks for taking the time to write this, and I’m really glad the articles are helping you get back into long-form reading.

On the “no specialist field” point: that’s a totally normal place to start. Most people don’t begin with a clear “home domain” (in investing we call it circle of competence), and then expand outward. They build one by following a few of recurring questions long enough that patterns start to repeat.

A few practical ways to approach it:

A) Use “core frameworks” as your temporary anchor (until a domain comes up). Even without a specialty, you can tie new ideas to a small set of mental tools that show up everywhere (I wrote a while back about some of these mental models):

• incentives and constraints (what rewards what)

• trade-offs and opportunity cost (what must be given up)

• feedback loops (what reinforces vs stabilises)

• compounding (small effects over time)

• distributions and base rates (what’s common vs rare)

• second-order effects (what happens after the obvious thing)

If you read broadly with that in mind, you’ll still be integrating new concepts into something stable, even if it’s not some specific “one field” yet.

B) Separate “reading to get through it” from “reading to learn it.” I see a lot of frustration comes from trying to do both at once. Try a two-pass approach:

• Pass 1 (flow pass): keep moving. Highlight terms you don’t know, but don’t stop for every one unless it blocks the main meaning of the paragraph.

• Pass 2 (dig pass): come back and look up the handful of terms that actually mattered.

This keeps your momentum.

C) The “why” loop is good, but try not to fall into bottomless rabbit holes.

D) try to aim for “useful understanding,” not “complete understanding,” on first contact. When you hit a keyword, try to capture just three things in your own words:

• what it is (one sentence)

• why it matters (one sentence)

• what changes when it changes (one sentence)

That’s often enough to keep reading intelligently.

E) One page in an hour is sometimes exactly right. Some reports are dense. The real question is: what’s your goal for that session?

And seriously, congrats on shifting away from short-form.

If you keep reading and keep noticing the same ideas reappearing, you’ll accidentally “choose” a specialist field over time.

Keep reading, keep learning.