Learning. I have been trying and trying to teach myself something or anything by reading countless articles. I do not feel smarter or more knoweldgable than I was.
Intuition. I haven’t developed an intuition for what I want by reading articles as an indirect survey of possibilities.
Depth. There’s lack of depth in what and how I have consumed. I haven’t engaged, implemented, experimented, explored or produced anything from everything I read. Maybe this is the bigger factor.
Structure. There’s serious lack of structure when teaching yourself, especially when you do not know what you want to learn. I have a vague idea of what I want to learn, something computer science related, and maybe how to draw one day. Schools offer that structure, people who have dedicated their life to teaching can offer that structure. Follow the textbooks, syllabus designed for courses at schools, there’s structure and years worth of work that went into creating it. You can follow this structure when teaching yourself.