I, as you and many other, have been thinking the same. But I realized that I could find out what part of Perl I wasn't knowing. I took a look at perl.pod. I looked at each title and thought "Do I know this document inside out, or don't I?" Then I knew what fields in Perl I didn't know. And then I did the same for the TOC in those documents I believed myself to know. I of course didn't know everything in them. :)
I didn't read everything I realized I didn't know. Some things seemed like they weren't relevant to me at the time being. But I knew it was there, and if I felt I needed it I knew where to look. So after doing this, I was much better at asking myself the right questions.
Just my angle,
ihb 