I've been tryinging to learn MAX for the last couple months. Building simple synth is cool, but I've stalled out. It looks like my local community college offers a class, so I'm hoping to get some more intentional learning in beyond YouTube videos.
I'd say doing the tutorials helps a lot, also with broadening your horizon with things you might want to look into.
I did that first and had a bit of a head start when I took courses while studying and those had the same effect: Showing me things that I didn't know about but interested me immediately.
I didn't think granular synthesis would be so for me. And I didn't think it would make more sense for the sun to play that piece via a light sensor, instead of just me.
Edit: Mind you, that was over a decade ago. But by the looks of it the tutorials are still largely the same and I love recognizing those camp default video files.