Comment by dan00

> For what its worth(1), I think that "learn a bunch of stuff -> go build something cool on the first try" isn't quite the right approach.

There might be also some kind of misconception in the way that you're seeing something cool and now also want to get this cool stuff. But if you aren't interested in the fundamentals - in this case electronics - and don't have fun learning these by simple experiments - like you described - then it's neither worthwhile for you nor you will get to the cool projects.