A Christmas gift of an instant pot was the gateway to my learning journey.
From there, I'm a huge fan of Jacques Pepin, and his simple approach and TONs of books and videos out there.
My biggest improvement was in making dishes with "pan sauces"
Repetition of variations on recipes with pan sauces taught me so many things.
After a while, you start to learn the "concepts" and order of things, and the how's and why's.
I'll try to make a short list:
Drying meat and bringing meat to room temp
Developing Fond - using a stainless tri-ply pan and learning to get pan temp right with "mercury ball" method.
Learning the order of the recipe, Brown meat then remove, cook onions/garlic, deglaze with with stock/wine/liquor, add optional things to sauce like dijon mustard, tomato paste, sour cream, heavy cream, squeeze of lemon.
From the show/book of "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat", I learned about the importance of "pre-salting" your proteins. What an amazing difference it makes salting your chicken/steak 24hrs ahead and letting it air dry. So much better flavor and browning.
Using timers, and cooking with care. Good cooking takes focus and attention. You can't put something on a pan and go watch a show. You need to put in that love/effort and be attentive as you would be watching a baby.
Anyways, I recommend working on one "type" of dish first and getting the hang of it and perfecting it.
It takes practice. Learn one dish that you like, then that will give you confidence to learn another.