Practice :) A tiny deliverable after each chapter or tutorial, something simple you can finish in a few days. Accept that it will “fail” sometimes, that’s part of it.

The best bit: the doubts you hit while practicing tell you exactly what to learn next.

That’s how you get out of tutorial hell: you stop following the course and start following your own questions.

Don’t follow the tutorial from start to finish. Pay attention (real attention) until you learn enough things to be able to goof around on your own. Then switch over to goofing around.

Stuck? Bored? Is what you learned so far not getting you where you want to go?

Resume the tutorial for a bit. Learn a couple new things. Then goof off with those new things.

Go back and forth.

This is basically how education works. Theory then application, then refinement.

Don’t try to become an expert by sitting through the entire tutorial. That’s boring.

Tutorial hell might be some type of procrastination. I’d watch YouTube videos all day on all topics because I didn’t want to create something and just “learn”, but it doesn’t create real skill and it is not where the fun lies.

The biggest challenge might just be to find the thing you want and can do. If you really want to learn, then you might just regulate your want to some beginner level that is borderline useless.

Take language leaning for example, you want to speak enough to understand a conversation, but as this takes a LOT of time it gets frustrating really fast. What you can do is learn a simple sentence and try to speak it and understand it. “Good morning, how are you doing?” — “Guten Morgen, wie geht es dir?”.

Or programing, don’t think about this huge project, but a simple simple action; read variables from a document or create a function for some math. One of my first programing was calculating Fibonacci numbers.

In my opinion it might not be so bad to be stuck in tutorial hell, it might just be a form of entertainment for you. But if its a form of addiction, then maybe treat it as such. If it is a form of escaism then treat it as such. If it is adhd or autism or something else then treat it as such. Take simple and small steps, celebrate successes however small they are and think why you defaulted to tutorials instead of doing something, even thought you want to do something

Try to do something yourself, and look up specific info when you need it. When you’re done (or hit a complete dead end), look back and ask yourself what you would do differently. The goal is to understand the choices you have to make, not just to be able to do each necessary subtask.

Take one thing you want to achieve and drill down until you get there. Then widen from there.

Fear not the man who has practiced 1000 kicks but the man who has practiced one kick a thousand times

Your question is too vague. What is the subject and how familiar are you with other stuff related to it?

If I know most of what I need, I just go with what I have, and use web search when I hit gaps in my knowledge.

If I know zero about it, I might try a tutorial, but depending what it is, I often prefer to find an expert level reference document and work through it starting on page 1. It takes longer but you get more solid understanding that way.

Somewhere in between can be problematic. The gaps in your knowledge can mean not knowing things that are interdependent on each other. So you hit a snag and don’t know where to look. Might want to restart as if from zero.

Just try making something you want. Only look up a tutorial when you encounter things you don’t know.

Ask lots of questions from those around you who have done it. They don’t have to be masters, but experienced. Don’t be afraid to be a learner. Soak up knowledge like a sponge.

What, exactly, is “tutorial hell” for you? If I learn something, I learn it and then use it. I may have to refresh some details if I change programming languages or hardware configurations, but I would not consider this “tutorial hell”. The last time I had to learn something seriously different (in terms of needing professional training), it was three intense days, and then I started developing a new product the next day.

Deliberately avoid all instruction. Use your intution, make it up as you go along.

I can’t say that I necessarily recommend this particular brand of insanity to just anyone, but it worked for me.

…I think.

Does school count as tutorial hell? What about a coding bootcamp?

i don’t do tutorials. they are generally useless.

i mostly work from documentation, then build my own documentation based on my use-cases to share with the rest of my team.

Step away from it, instead slamming my head against it. It’s better to let something sit and rest when learning something than it is to cram. You need to give yourself time to digest and reflect on what you have learned.

If you’re talking about Youtube video tutorials, an effective trick is to press the ‘3’ key when the video starts. That will take you 30% into the runtime. You skip all the ‘hey guys’ and ‘this is why I made this video’ fluff and get strait to the information. It’s spooky how well this works.