In the AI era, how do you actually learn and understand new concepts?

I've been in IT for a long time, and lately I've been going deep into DevOps/Kubernetes. One thing keeps bugging me about how we learn this stuff.

When I want to understand a new concept, docs and most articles feel written for people who already get it. Even with experience, I often only get it after reading the same thing explained a few different ways. Videos are the opposite problem: they run at the author's pace, not mine, so I keep pausing and rewinding, and often spend a lot of time to learn very little.

So both feel like extremes — articles too static, videos too dynamic and out of my control. I keep wondering if the missing piece is something in between: text at your own pace, with small interactive bits where you can poke at the idea until it clicks.

AI pushes me this way too. Now that it writes a lot of the code for me, I care less about memorizing details and more about quickly getting a correct mental model — knowing what I want to do, and letting AI handle the how.

So I'm curious:

• Do you also find docs too dense and videos too slow to pay off, or is it just me?
• When a new concept finally clicks for you, what usually does it?
• Have you seen any sites or articles that explain a concept with interactive animations or little playgrounds you can poke at — and did that actually help you, or is it a gimmick?