SICP gets challenging in the very first chapter. You should aim to do about 1/3rd of the exercises, knowing that you can come back and do more later. The first chapter will certainly improve your ability to reason about recursive code. If you lose motivation later in the book (like I did), you will still have gained something.
I wish I learned it earlier in my life. Before I realized what you said, I procrastinated on so many books and never started many I wanted to read.
After I realized this, I finished way more books, and learned many new things even when I didn't finish books. You don't need to finish books to learn new things that make you better.
Even you read four chapters of a book, you are still those four chapters wiser than yourself who hadn’t read those four chapters.
I agree wholeheartedly. Admittedly I am a bit compulsive about buying books. It's mostly focused on history and computer science. But once I realized the goal was not to read as many books as possible but to read as much of books as possible (especially compared to other sources like random blogs/news), a big weight lifted from my shoulders. I no longer feel bad about having many books I haven't/won't ever finish. But I have many sources on topics that interest me, and physical books are random access. I can always check the index or the chapter list and just read a bit on some topic that comes to mind. Invariably I end up expanding my world view a little bit.
