To my mind, though, the thing that separates successful learners from unsuccessful is persistent constructive dissatisfaction. If you have some difficulty finding contentment—and are never happy to rest on your laurels for too long—then you will be determined to achieve more and more, and learning will happen as a by-product. The longer a plateau becomes, the more likely it is to stay a plateau; and the shorter you can make a plateau, the better for your progress.
Perhaps, as you say, this comes from not keeping track of learning progress. However, I think there is an important other side of it: you do want to keep track of progress toward some other goal, such as making a game. Then it becomes a matter of “I need to learn about networking in order to add multiplayer to my awesome game”. When learning stands between you and your dreams, you quickly learn to learn quickly.