Monads are Monoids, so it's a good idea to build up an intuition for Monoids first. Then move up to Applicatives, and then finally Monads if you find you actually need them by then. By the time you get to them, Monads will be boring.

Applicatives were dusty theory when I learned Monads, so they never burned themselves into my consciousness. I'm doing good with Monoids tho.