Wait till you are married and have kids.  Then, you really have no time.  Just a note, try to follow the tweets of HD Moore and Jayson Street and you will learn that you have so much more to learn!! And of course, with no time.   

I feel you guys!!! 

I think this is where realistic goal setting and direction/focus can really help. If you try to learn everything about everything, you're just going to end up spinning your wheels.

You should pick a topic/area that interests you, and determine a realistic time-frame for getting to your desired level of expertise. That's not to say you have to go out of your way to avoid learning about anything else (i.e. covering your ears and running out of the room) if something comes up, but you definitely should have one primary area of study.

I've found its also easier to keep up your momentum/motivation and receive a greater sense of accomplishment as you continually advance. When trying to learn several things at once, you advance far more slowly with each topic and feeling like a novice with many things for an extended period of time gets old.

Yeah I know exactly what you mean sachitre, where ill be looking for information on say CSRF on the web, browse to a site that provides some information on the subject and then you see several other topics that look interesting, start looking at those and then completely loose track of what i was learning!

I suppose this is why i like to read books because i like to read from start to finish without jumping from chapter to chapter.... problem is books are not as upto date as the web and obviously COST MONEY!

Fail! Sorry I mean this with the utmost respect. By stating something like "I know that I would never...", you're setting yourself up for failure. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness) Your approach should be "I will be the best at X" no matter how long it takes you to get to where you have to go. This will allow you to keep a positive outloook outward and subliminally and help you further down the road.

With HD or anyone for that matter, there is experience. No one is born knowing, its all trial, error and learning. However, you have to have a goal and stay focused on achieving that goal. While HD might be considered the grandaddy of say reversing into exploitability, he might outright stink at say forensics, networking, etc., does this make him less that who he is? I think not.

Set realistic goals for yourself and work towards achieving them. Do it for yourself, for the love of it as opposed to the money (it will eventually get there if you do things properly) or trying to be on par with anyone else. One of my goals right now is to understand reversing to the point of opening up any file, knowing how that files works all the way down. This is not an easy task and as one gets older, retention becomes more difficult. However, I split this learning phase into something fun for me.

It gets frustrating at times because I understand the entire spectrum of things when it comes to reversing on an exploitation scale, there is something (one thing I haven't figured out yet) that is obscuring a clear picture for me. The learning process I've made fun and challenging, its what keeps me going. I dislike having to state: "I don't understand this" and that approach has allowed me to learn at a greater pace  - making sure I do what I need to do to understand things.

Never doubt yourself or place yourself in any situation where you state: "I will never be as good as..." otherwise you literally set yourself up to fail. I believe in the power of thought and being able to overcome obstacles no matter what they are (trust me when I state this, I've been there done that in life as a whole). You can achieve whatever you want if you believe in yourself enough and create a gameplan to achieve your goal.

@ sil

Thanks for that, you know i never even thought about what i said in the post in regards to "i will never get to".... You are defiinetely right and am certainly going to change my way of thinking....

Yeah I have recently started a role as a pen tester so just need to try and become a ninja in this area.  There is just so much else that goes along with it like the understanding of risk management, security controls, auditing etc etc.... but will focus on this area for now!