> they don't help the world or achive something spectacular

Sure they do.

What if I become really good at summarizing papers for laymen? What if I then start a publishing house for good laymen explanations of science? What if this then leads to the abolishment of all those stupid "Caffeine will give you cancer lololol" articles your mum reads?

Or maybe I'll just learn a lot and use it as an advantage somewhere else.

Or it might inspire people to read more base sources to form informed opinions about things you care about.

And I'm almost certainly not smart and persistent enough for a Nobel Prize.

If you do become really good at summarizing papers, you are welcome to join our (shameless plug of a free and open source project) Science Gist (http://www.sciencegist.com) community. It's early days for this project, but I believe it has a huge potential. Also, since you're living in the same city as I am, we should get coffee/tea sometime soon and talk science.

Or join forces with https://medivizor.com/

Actually what i want to point out is, what's the rush?

Reading papers will be your first step in winning a Nobel Prize (unless, of course, you’re aiming for some other, specifically noble, prize :)).

How do you expect to do anything spectacular if you don't put in effort to get good at something?

I am not trying to be snarky, but do you do anything that helps the world and/or achieves something spectacular?

Like pay taxes?