Sometimes just try it first. Reading the rules makes more sense after you’ve broken a few.

Instructions are answers to questions you have not asked yet. Read cold, they are a list of arbitrary rules; read after you have made the mistake they were written to prevent, they suddenly have a shape and a reason. Preparation has a point past which it becomes a way of delaying the part where you might look foolish.

With the next new thing, give yourself ten minutes of fumbling before you open the manual. Break something harmless. Then read, and notice how much of it now sounds like someone describing exactly what just happened to you.