Poker Knowledge - how much do you need?

Of course the pat answer is you can never know/learn too much. But, as mentioned in my previous post, it all is a function of trade offs between increased $$, time to allocate towards poker vs. other pursuits, etc, etc. Poker is truly a game where you can spend enormous amounts of time as 'a student of the game'. It's no coincidence that on WSOP telecasts participants featured often have bios that go something like 'former chess world champion, PhD Columbia in Applied Mathematics, extensive published articles in Journal of Modern Eggheadism on Modern Warfare and Game Theory.' Ferguson, Lederer, etc - these mofo's are smart. Scary smart.

I think it's a mistake to assume that 'normal smart' guys like me can ultimately learn the game at that level. That doesn't mean that I could get a long way there, given the means/time/opportunity. But therein lies the rub. I am neither a professional poker player, nor do I aspire to be. I am delirously happy as a married father of two very young kids, with a working wife, a full-time job, a yard/house that always is suffering from lack of attention, and a burgeoning real estate empire consisting of a townhouse and a duplex I am renting out (which involves these pesky tenants always needing something). However, I do truly enjoy poker, and want to make my game as solid as I can given those constraints.

So what does that mean?

If you go back to my earlier 'Steps of Learning' post, I mentioned that achieving true mastery of Blackjack was a two-part endeavor in Step 8. First learn perfect Basic Strategy, then learn to Count Cards. In poker, there are similar break points in the effort to learn the game, represented by line breaks below. The key components would be (I'm sure I missed something important, just as I often do right before a bad beat- pls help me out):

1) Starting hands
2) Playing Position
3) Reading Board

4) Calculating Outs

5) Computing Odds (Pot, Implied, etc)
6) Determining EV

7) Reads, Tells, etc

I have found that learning #1 & #2 was fairly easy (<30 days of playing). #3 I have pretty much down pat, but still screw it up occasionally, although it tends to be things like sucker/gap straights, etc. #4 has taken a while, but I mostly have it. #'s 5 & 6 are really, really hard for me, especially in game time. I understand them in theory, but putting them to work is tough.

I wonder what the incremental advantage to knowing this is, especially at the level I play typically (almost all NL SnG's <$20).

#7 is almost purely a function of intuition and experience, so can only come with time.

Thoughts?