Well, my native language is not English, so I could think that reading in English improve that language skill.
What about if I feel I'm not a good software engineer?
What about if I feel I'm not a good software engineer?
We do many things just for pleasure; we go on holiday, we have friends, we eat dessert, we go for walks, we read books.
If you feel you need to improve your English or your technical skills, that's fine, you can study. But that's unrelated to all the other activities you might do for your own pleasure.
Well said! This is the curse of the modern society/economy that everything you do should be towards some "improvement" either materially or otherwise. The concept and importance of "play" has all but been forgotten. Incidentally, much of Science progressed only because many of the Scientists actually loved "playing" with what interested them. The actual inventions/discoveries were more accidental like.
Knowledge for Knowledge's sake is a very good thing.
If you are close to the beginning of your journey, like say 1-3 years ago you didn't know how to program at all, them I would take the advice you are getting with a grain of salt. I would recommend pouring your free time into your trade, gaining both a breadth of knowledge about software engineering (like spending 3 hours learning about C++ not to write a program in it but to be able to understand what it is and what it isn't so you can carry a brief conversation when the topic turns to it) and a depth of knowledge with your preferred toolset (like 200+ hours going through 3-4 ground up resources on Python because its your most reached for language to get work done).
Once you have that strong foundation, the other advice here is very sound. Turn your computer off and go do wood working, or read a comprehensive history series that tackles each decade (and then do it again from an Asian focused author rather than a Western focused one), or find a solid podcast to listen to while you go for long walks in nature, etc. Pretty much anything other than sitting at your computer for both your job and your hobby.
But then reading your message made me think: this sounds a lot like Sartre's waiter [1]. I don't think I can change the way I feel and approach life, and I'm quite comfortable with my approach, but if you're not and you want to make a change, you might want to dig into why that's the case.
Then you might actually be a descent software engineer. It's when you stop worrying if you're good enough that you are most likely falling behind.