What I do while being a CEO and not engineering anymore is to always entertain some interests in engineering. This is easy for you as you are actually working on something. In my case it was always the biggest challenge of the engineers of the company.
I've spent my commute time to learn about these topics from youtube. For example watching EEVBlog or Uncle Bob or whatever. Then stop sometimes and just think about it regarding my past experience. Replay the stuff that I lived through while thinking about what I heard. Then find my best colleagues and sincerely ask them what they think about what I was concluding just then.
Also I like Twitter/X after just muting/notinterested-buttoning the people who just post idiot stuff. Then it is quite a good source of ideas about the present mainstream - that's also very important.
But the most important: never forget while swimming in ideas and memes: take some minutes sometime to asses what actually worked - and what is that somehow never works for ... reasons.
I've spent my commute time to learn about these topics from youtube. For example watching EEVBlog or Uncle Bob or whatever. Then stop sometimes and just think about it regarding my past experience. Replay the stuff that I lived through while thinking about what I heard. Then find my best colleagues and sincerely ask them what they think about what I was concluding just then.
Also I like Twitter/X after just muting/notinterested-buttoning the people who just post idiot stuff. Then it is quite a good source of ideas about the present mainstream - that's also very important.
But the most important: never forget while swimming in ideas and memes: take some minutes sometime to asses what actually worked - and what is that somehow never works for ... reasons.
Great question on HN!