[mduncs]

You make a great point that using knowledge is important in actually learning the study material. Personally, those moments of learning happen when I stumble across a problem where I'm applying my knowledge in the wild.

What I've found is that spaced-repetition software lets me keep in touch with information long enough to be able to have those moments more consistently, otherwise I read something interesting, take notes, and two weeks later its pretty much out of memory. By extending the amount of time info is living in my head, I get more chances to use the knowledge and take it to heart!

This doesn't lend itself to everything perfectly well though, I've had luck learning how to do household tasks like gardening, cooking where I'm semi-regularly getting chances to use what I'm learning