There is another thing I'd like to mention here.
Everyone knows who Bruce Lee is. Famous martial artist, a guy who is great at punching stuff. What has this to do with words? What few know is, Bruce Lee was a total nerd. That guy would read every damn book about human physiology, nutrition, physical exersize, martial arts, strategy in warfare, he would fly around the world and talk to every expert he could find, whatever would give him ideas about improving his martial practice. This is an important part why he became one of the best. Of course this doesn't mean he would spend more time reading and talking about martial arts than practicing martial arts. But it doesn't mean he shouldn't do that at all because "what has this to do with beating up people and stuff?". You know what the renown boxer Vitali Klitchko is? a PHD in sports science. Know who his advisors are? doctors. So he can better whoop ass in the ring.
There is sometimes this shallow attitude in arts, and even a vulgar pride, in total illiteracy. Get over it. it's useless. There are a lot of great books on the arts. They are there to help you. Universities offer practice facilities a normal person may not be able to have at home. Institutions are there to connect with people and exchange ideas, have conversations, discuss, debate, for exposure and inspiration. Hell, that's even what Shaolin Monks do about interpretation of faith and practice. Make use of everything that has something to offer. There are valid critiques on problems with centralized academics etc. But so are there on everything else. Words can confuse and deceive you? Well yeah, but so can feelings of pretty pictures, which you then can only escape with the truth of rational thought. Learn to make the best of things, not to be afraid of things.
I once had discussions with friends about learning skill, and this too is relevant here I think:
Because the thing is, you need to get knee deep into stuff to really understand it, there is no best way, where is different cases and a lot of experience coming from coding, coding and more coding, bold experimentation, gone awry and astray, that's where you build up understanding, you need to build up intuition. There is this misunderstanding that only arts are about your guts and feels and stuff, and then there is science that is all thinking. The truth is, any kind of mastery is about intuition that came from exercise and thinking. A good chess player or mathematician feels where the most promising and brilliant solution is before he (in)validates the intuition in detailed rationale. But intuition must be earned with hard work. You feel intuitive solution because you have mastered a difficulty, and that which you haven't mastered yet you must think and exercise until you masterfully feel solutions. Well, ho-hum, of course, right. Plenty of trends have been coming and going, and they are all good, if you critically investigate them, their right measure and best cases of use. I find it amazingly interesting when people do extreme (ab)uses for project study, but in the end their true achievement should be understanding how it connects the many dots, than to make a single point.
But when it is about building skills, it's important to stay in continuous touch with your craft. And that you do by embracing its rhythm: a project consists of many aspects, some more difficult than others. Some deeds feel recreative, some exhausting. It is important to switch between tasks of varying scope, difficulty and playfulness, to go along with your various conditions of fitness, than to drop the craft for long on self-destruct. Phases of ambition rise naturally out of curious playfulness; but switching from a mindset of serious accomplishment to playful experiment is something you need to remind yourself again at times; why you love your craft, not learn to hate it in hunting after a certain idea of progress.