This advice is fine for the first year or so, but afterwards I would start trying out various packages and customizations. There are packages that can make your experience much better (projectile, swiper, ace-window, ace-jump, move-border, eyebrowse, winner, color-identifier-mode, off the top of my init.el).

And, of course, if you do any programming at all, you should install magit immediately. It is the best git experience anywhere, on any platform, period. It is an unbelievable productivity booster, and people who haven't used it do not even appreciate what it can do (ever wanted to quickly apply a single diff from one of your stashes to your current code tree? it's two keystrokes).

Approach emacs like you would a musical instrument: you are not expected to play the piano on your first day, and the first year will require some patience and training, but eventually you'll start playing those sonatas.

[context: my Emacs init file has lines that are 27 years old]