If you can find a ham-cram session (where a volunteer organization gets together and does test prep and test on the same day), it's pretty easy to go from zero to tech or zero to general in a single day.
This is similar to what I did; I bought the tech manual, and then used hamstudy.org to learn the tests. Once you get your radio and are able to actually get on the air, use the tech manual as a reference on how you should operate.