For me, during my first year the most important thing was also taking notes in a notebook and studying models on my own. (Even if I didn’t always read my notes later, the act of writing them helped me remember things better and gave me time to think about what I was doing and why it worked that way). I downloaded tons of meshes just to open them and check how they were built, how the topology flowed, why certain decisions were made. That kind of “silent studying” taught me more than any tutorial.
The second thing that made a huge difference was choosing a clear style and role I wanted to focus on. Once I knew what kind of art I wanted to make, learning became much easier — and collecting thousands of reference images became part of my routine.
Even today I still learn something new with every project.
My biggest mistake early on? Lack of planning. If I didn’t first define exactly what I wanted to build, I could spend dozens of hours in Blender with no real result. That was my biggest struggle for the first two years.