Mei

Waiting two releases costs almost nothing and removes the ones that were interesting rather than good.

The other lever is timing, and waiting is underrated.

Very little is worse in six months. If a tool is genuinely good it will still be there, with better documentation, fewer bugs, more answers to your questions when you get stuck, and a clearer picture of whether it is maintained. If it is not, you will have saved yourself a migration into something abandoned.

What I look for before adopting something into real work:

A second major release, which tells you they can handle their own breaking changes.

Somebody other than the author using it in production, and writing about the bad parts.

An honest limitations section in the documentation. Its absence is a genuine warning sign.

A migration path out, which nobody checks and everybody eventually needs.

On the personality question at the end of your post: partly, and the useful reframe is that following and adopting are different activities. Reading about new things is cheap, keeps you aware, and costs an hour. Adopting is expensive. The people who look productive while switching constantly are usually following widely and adopting rarely, and the ones who look productive ignoring everything have usually just made that trade explicit.

Keep reading. Adopt on a criterion.