One way to keep yourself playing the same game is to pick 1 new mod to learn / experiment with on every play through. You can either play as normal and wait until you hit that "stopping point" and then start learning the new mod, or force yourself to play exclusively with the new pack. I had 1 play through that I was on a multi block kick and never had learned Immersive Engineering so I forced myself to play exclusively with that mod. I had a lot of fun with that base and learned 2 things: 1) IE has some wickedly cool multi block structures and 2) IE is wholly and completely not worth the effort from a min/max standpoint.