“This new tutorial looks more complete.…”
Exactly the kind of thing you hope to find when you’re stuck in tutorial hell.

When you're learning something new, whether it's design, development, or anything in between, online tutorials seem like the safest starting point. They’re structured. They’re comforting. Just follow along, and voilà—you’ve built something. Or at least, it looks like you have.

But building confidence? Solving real problems? That’s where tutorials fall short.

Stuck on Repeat: The Limitations of Tutorials

I spent a long time in what people call "tutorial hell", looping through course after course, convinced I was leveling up. And to be fair, I was learning something. But I wasn’t applying for anything.

I remember once I was constantly watching Laravel tutorials during my free time. I’d follow along, type out the exact code from the video, and feel like I was making progress.

But there was a problem: The moment the video ended, so did my ability to code.

I tried building a simple CRUD app from scratch, something I had “learned” multiple times. But I couldn’t do it without rewinding a video or copy-pasting from someone else’s code.

That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t learning. I was memorising steps.

Memorising vs Understanding

Memorisation can help at first, it builds familiarity with syntax and patterns. But without understanding why things work, that knowledge falls apart when you're on your own. In my case, I knew the steps, but not the concepts behind them. So I couldn’t adapt or solve problems unless someone else had done it first. Real learning started when I stopped consuming tutorials and started building. Struggling through problems forced me to truly understand and not just remember.

Pros and Cons of Memorisation

Pros:

1. Faster Recall of Syntax
   This lets you remember how to do things on your own without looking them up. Memorising syntax like for loop or if-else statements helps you write code quicker because you know what to type.
   
   

2. Build Confidence Early On
   Memorisation gives you a sense of progress and familiarity. For example, remembering how to write a simple if statement gives you small wins. This gives a sense of achievement, which builds motivation and momentum.
   
   

3. Improves Typing
   This is about how fast and accurately you can do the things you already know. An example would be typing console.log() becomes second nature
   
   

Cons: 

1. False Sense of Understanding
   Memorising without understanding leads to shallow knowledge. For example, copy-pasting a React component without knowing what useEffect does.
   
   

2. Dependency on Tutorials
   Learners often memorise solutions shown in tutorials but can’t adapt them to new problems. Let’s say you watch a tutorial and can’t build on your own because you only memorised steps, not concept
   
   

3. No Problem-Solving Skills
   Problems are part of everyday life, so, if you only memorise things, you will feel lost when requirements change slightly that are not on the steps you memorise.

Memorising without understanding left me in cycle. I felt busy and productive, but I wasn’t growing. I had the illusions of progress, but not the skills to back it up. And that’s frustrating, because when you’re faced with a blank editor and a real problem to solve, everything you memorise disappears.

Breaking Free

Things only started to shift when I was pushed into something real.

I was given a coding task for my OJT (on-the-job training) application, a test to translate a Figma design into a working site using WordPress and React, two technologies I barely knew. And I had just seven days to do it.

I didn’t have the luxury to watch tutorials this time. I only learned the basics and I had to dive in right away, figure things out, break things, fix them, and actually build something from scratch.

And honestly? It was stressful. But also freeing.

Freeing, as I was finally learning to rely on myself, however I still turned to AI and YouTube when I got stuck, but this time they became support tools, not step-by-step guides.

Because for the first time, I wasn’t just copying—I was thinking. I was solving problems, not just watching others solve them. I failed a lot. But I also grew faster than I ever had with any tutorial series.

That shift from relying on content to relying on myself was what truly felt liberating. I failed a lot, but I understood more.

Tips and Tricks for Escaping Tutorial Hell

If you're still stuck in the tutorial loop, I’ve been there too. Here are a few things that helped me move from just watching to building:

1. Build something—anything
   Start small. A calculator. A random number guessing game. A simple layout. It doesn’t have to be perfect, all you need is just get started.
   
   

2. Code along, then code alone
   After watching a tutorial on creating navbar, pause it and recreate it from scratch.
   
   

3. Visualise what you’ve learned
   Visualise the concepts you’ve learned in your mind, for example, how a loop continues to run when a condition is met.
   
   

4. Failure = progress
   Getting stuck is part of the process. Struggling with bugs means you’re learning.
   
   

5. Share your work
   Share your projects with others. If you can explain it clearly, you understand it deeply

Finding the Right Environment

One thing I had learned: your environment matters.

If you're constantly surrounded by people who only follow the path of watching, never building and you’ll start to think that’s enough.

But when I got into a real-world setting, surrounded by teammates and seniors who expected results, it changed how I worked. They weren’t focused on how many tutorials I’d completed, instead, they wanted to know: Can you build? Can you adapt?

Having that kind of environment where you're encouraged to try, to fail, and to keep going makes a huge difference. You learn faster. You take ownership. And you build confidence from doing, not just watching.

Conclusion: Growth Begins Where Your Comfort Ends

You can be ahead in theory and still be behind in practice.

It’s not laziness that keeps you in tutorial hell, it’s the illusion of progress. It feels good to follow someone else and it feels productive, but it’s not real until it’s yours.

So, if you're stuck rewatching videos, take this as your sign.

Close the tab. Open your editor. Build something broken. Build something real.

You’ll never feel ‘ready.’ Build anyway. That’s how you get ready.