Noticing that I’m more likely to gravitate strongly toward disciplines once I can place its theory into a historical narrative.

Began to study networking protocols after reading STS-laced histories of the development of TCP/IP and the OSI protocols.
Am now invested in becoming a decent chess player after learning about the succession of schools of chess theory.

Seeing how domain knowledge accretes over time makes it easier to engage fields that would otherwise seem too complex to approach.