Down that hole
TAKE. NOTES.
Use a note-taking application you are comfortable with (I use Joplin) to maintain a history of what you wanted to do, why you did/did not do it, and how you did it; save relevant links to help articles, SO posts, etc… (this is particularly useful if you want to retrace your steps to undo something). If you end up not doing something, strike through the text and leave a note explaining why you chose not to do it after all and what alternative, if any, you went with.
This greatly expedites the learning process, in my opinion.
Edit: I realized everyone was responding to top comment, removed long winded rambling about my personal Linux journey.
I 100% second note taking - my personal favorite is ObsidianMD.
I used Joplin for many months, with WebDAV (koofr)/e2e setup for sync, till I discovered ObsidianMD.
Now: all my notes are in markdown/plantuml/mermaid/Obsidian canvas/drawio, managed primarily by ObsidianMD, but occasionally on vscode for special use cases (plantuml diagram editing… vscode flow is better). I use obsidian git to sync to my git repo across my machines. Still love Joplin in a pinch (mobile app on occasion) though.
