This was me for the first many months, and I still keep the manual close by, or my laptop the PDF along with this forum.
After reading all these replies it made me think about a few things.
Personally when I read something new, it does not stick right away.
Even if I was just learning through video tutorials, all those little things don’t just stick in my memory 1st time around.
I read a little, work on the OT until I get lost, read my way out, get lost again, repeat.
The lack of knowledge, and lack of muscle memory make the OT seem slow at first.
I’ll read something look at the OT and go, “which buttons do I press again?”
First I would suggest ignoring Parts, Sampling, and Arrangement.
Just pick a simple specific task and learn that.
Load up a few drum loops and a few sounds.
Make a little didty, learn p-locks, sample locks, neighbor tracks, stacking effects, play with scenes.
Save the project, just dont get married to it.
Next, maybe hook up an external synth, explore the midi side, doing the same as above.
OK, so now jump into sampling.
Watch these 2 tutorials.
After doing such things, your muscle memory should be starting to learn, and you’ll start to develop ideas on how you want to approach something substantial.
When I get to this point, I start to make an “Initialize” project.
I will use this project as a starting point over and over for years. It changes a lot at first, but it starts to build into something cohesive. After a while I might have 2 or 3 projects like this that serve different purposes.
Approaching just the basics, one piece at a time, it will help things that are weird to understand at first, like Parts.