There’s just too many things I’d want to learn, but I probably can’t do everything at once. And I also don’t know where to start when it comes to basically any topic.
Courses could absolutely work, but they tend to be paid, so that’s a problem.
How do you approach learning new material, especially if you only know a goal rather than a full/partial path?
A goal is good. Start working toward it, learn what you need as you need it.
Try writing the topics down, then sorting them into a tier list of what you’d most like to learn if you had to choose. Take the few things at the top, and try to set aside regular scheduled time each day/week to focus on them.
Once you have topics, do some searches for ‘how to learn x’, etc. Sort through the slop, you should find some people eager to share how they learned it.
Also, ask around on Lemmy for individual topics.
Depending on the topic/sort of topic, find a textbook. Those are exactly an attempt to layout a learning plan. You don’t have to read it cover to cover or do every exercise, but follow how they’ve organized material. Same kind of thing, you can search and find course syllabi that college profs have put online for free, or MOOC stuff like MIT OCW.