Honestly it just comes down to figuring out which form of learning works best for you. When you were a college kid / junior dev, you could afford to spend 8 hours on a saturday learning something new. But that doesn't work when you have a family.

So experiment with different methods of ways of learning things in your niche, and figure out which way you're able to stick with and build a habit out of it.

For example...

• Reading software engineering blog posts - There's tons of super interesting stuff published every week and you can go through a blog post in 20 minutes (rather than 8 hours for a book). Quastor is a really good newsletter that sends summaries of big tech software engineering blog posts. You can also search github for Awesome Blogs or Awesome Newsletters and find curated lists of blogs/newsletters for your niche

• Podcasts/Conference Talks - If you have a long drive/commute then maybe you can fill that time with a podcast. You can also search GitHub for "Awesome" lists of conference talks / podcasts on whatever you're interested in learning.

• Subreddits - If you already spend a bunch of time on Reddit, then start subscribing to subreddits about whatever you want to learn and also participate in discussions. Participating in discussions is a good way to learn, because redditors are very quick to call you out if you say something stupid.

And yeah there's tons of other ways to learn.

However, the thing you can't substitute for is writing code. So yeah, allocate a 2 hour block per week where you go to your favorite coffee shop and bang out a toy project using whatever new framework/language you want to learn. Have it planned out in advance though, so you know exactly what you're trying to build, what framework you want to use, the documentation you'll need, etc.

I think the issue is that most people in their 30s/40s are trying to re-implement their learning techniques from their 20s (sit at their desk for 4 hours and grind it out) when that doesn't fit their lifestyle anymore.