Although I’m not entirely familiar with the platform, I know that SecondLife is used as an educational tool (an interesting instructor’s perspective here.) Certainly brings the social aspect into it.

I laughed pretty hard when I clicked that link and saw it was to my tweet.

This brings to mind Seth Godin’s grad school for unemployed college students (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/graduate-school-for-unemployed-college-students.html). I understand how you feel about wanting to tackle all these things, and how sometimes these goals can be conflicting. One thing I considered doing, and this may be a bit too extreme/limiting..is setting a hard deadline for myself. For instance, if I want to work on Android development, give myself exactly 3 months to churn something out, and then force myself to move on. This could, theoretically, result in a self-imposed sense of urgency and possibly provide the stress required to really hammer something out. If I’m excited about what I’m working on, then I’ll spend extra time as the deadline closes in to complete it before I’m forced to move to my next project I wish to tackle.

Just one idea. Not saying its a great one, but something I’ve been kicking around.

As for Lynda, it’s okay, but I think you’d be better off to just pick up a decent book or two on particular topics of interest. I’d be happy to make some recommendations. It also depends on what your long term goals are.

Languages are something that have interested me quite a bit, but I haven’t made much progress on them. I think you need to be in a situation where you can use it conversationally to really gain fluency. This summer I’ll be working for a manager that speaks Spanish as a first language, so I may try and pick that up again then.