Ask HN: How do I correct my poor academic hygiene ex post facto?

Ever since I can remember, I have had poor academic hygiene. In middle and high school I did the bare minimum to pass, but I was strongly reluctant to study or do homework. I purposefully missed 10 days because that was the maximum I could miss before getting an attendance failure. I went to a four-year university for a year and got a 3.94 GPA for both semesters, but I feel like I didn't learn much at all (and it is more likely that the grade was handed to me). The only classes I can recall that were intellectually challenging was a history course that had required reading. I had a hard time staying focused and it would usually end with me skimming the textbook and not really learning much at all.

I ended up quitting college because I had no academic focus. I didn't want to be in debt without a strong sense of focus on something I liked.

In the past few months, I've had the desire to learn something interesting. Unfortunately whenever I want to learn something new, I end up getting stuck in a "fractal" where I go so deep into a topic that I realize I know nothing at all. It really dampens my motivation.

For example, "I want to learn about farming" -> "I am going to read about basic gardening" -> "Soil is really important to gardens, I should learn about soil structure and healthy soil" -> "I have to learn about organisms in the soil" -> "To understand how these organisms interact with the soil, I'll need to learn the physics and chemistry behind it" -> "Wow, this physics and chemistry stuff is WAY over my head, I'm just going to give up learning about farming"

I guess I'm missing the foundation necessary to understand and study more advanced topics. I continue to be a poor mathematician, a lackluster writer, and an intellectually devoid person.

Is there anyone out there who has faced this same issue? How can I go about fixing my academic hygiene?