I ususally find myself working in bursts. I have been on the knowledge gathering burst for the past few months. I went all crazy, bought books, read through most of them. Read HN posts etc.

But now I am kind of getting sick of it. I am now at a stage where I don't want to be on HN. And I am shifting into application mode. Now I will be focusing on applying what I have been gaining. Once I get sick of it, I will switch back to gaining mode.

So I would suggest, if you know that you also have a similar pattern (of working in bursts) then just do it until you get sick of it and then shift to application mode.