Whenever I have to learn a new OS, system, tool, programming language, etc: if I have trouble with it, I just write up a training manual as if I were also tasked with teaching others. What I end up with is a customized courseware for just me that I can refer back to at any time. Time consuming, but very effective for me.
This makes me wonder about the damage FAQs do to a community; where once there was a continual flow of new people needing newbie explanations - and a continual flow of not-quite-newbies benefiting from writing those explanations over and over, but different people each time, and implicitly being welcoming through that interaction - there is instead an implicitly unwelcoming response with a link to a FAQ. A FAQ which is dauntingly large due to its attempt to be comprehensive, but never deleted and refreshed, so getting ever more outdated and cruftier.