Learning languages is similar to other things to learn, say Math, Biology, technical sciences or anything else. All compose a whole system. Your task is to find how the "system" has been built up, whatever the field is you wish to investigate and study. First build the frame of your long-term language learning.

 

If you have a mind and thinking of looking for the system in everything you deal with, it can help you to benefit the most of anything that you meet on your professional and other ways during your life. Having a system-thinking mind might be a gorgeous advantage.

 

Since I recognised that looking for the system of the thing I wish to discover, it is much easier for me to be familiar with a field, to be able to see the essence of it, to be able to distinguish the important from the one that is unessential (or unessential at the level you are) and of course, it takes much less time to complete your goals.

(Sometimes  - mostly in case of pretty complicated issues - I find that my brain is agains (resist!) to understand the part of something until I get and give it enough information to be able to outline the system itself. After it I need hardly any time to adopt what was difficult before it.)