Read an article once that called this "project based learning" and it stuck with me. Just having a boring real world task makes the code click way faster than any tutorial. My first real loop was scraping sports scores because I was tired of checking the website. That hands on mess is where you actually learn how things work.
Funny enough, I used to think you needed to finish all the tutorials first. Then I tried making a simple script to text me the weather each morning. That mess of broken code and googling taught me more in a week than months of videos. What was your first project that made things click?
I actually learned more from a structured course at the community college. Having a teacher explain the why behind the loops helped me avoid a lot of early frustration.