One of the many obstacles to goal-achieving is maintaining knowledge and interest in the same topic over months and years. One of the tools to help you do that is anki, which allows you to indefinitely remember Q&A type information once you learn it.
Another tool is RSS. If you subscribe to a blog about brain surgery and read it every day, then your interest will be less likely to drift towards arm surgery and you will have cutting-edge knowledge of your field. Works even better if you find ten good blogs.
I started by using RSS for YouTube and comments, and over the last couple years I’ve added in more and more stuff about research.
Public Domain Dedication.