I’m coining this term skill-stacking. Ever since I started taking coding seriously I realised I’ve been doing this. I never learn one new concept in isolation. I usually absorb a concept at a high-level and “bank it”. I then use a side-project as an opportunity to open up this bank, see what concepts would be a good fit for the project and batch up a bunch of these and learn them in one go.
This helps me understand how concepts link together rather than learning about it isolation and a side project lets me feel-out the ergonomics how they work exactly and help me reach that aha moment quicker.