The best way to learn monads is to ignore the IO one for now, and learn what >>= and return does for each "pure" one individually. E.g. Maybe, List, Either etc.

The best way to learn monads is to ignore the IO one for now, and learn what >>= and return does for each "pure" one individually. E.g. Maybe, List, Either etc. With enough examples understand you will understand the pattern. At various points you may want to check you understand what the type system is doing in the implementation.