Having recently adopted Emacs enthusiastically after years of fairly low-powered Vim use, this is what has worked for me. - Do the built-in tutorial before any

Having recently adopted Emacs enthusiastically after years of fairly low-powered Vim use, this is what has worked for me. - Do the built-in tutorial before anything else. - Read through most of the manual. It's extraordinarily good despite containing a few small and usually obvious errors. You can skip things, e.g. calendaring if you're happy with your current calendar system. - Get a friend's nontrivial init file (.emacs, init.el, etc.) or find a representative one online. Ideally use one from someone who uses Emacs for the same stuff you will, so more of it will be relevant to you. Read and understand every part of this file, copying and adapting into your own .emacs as you feel moved. - Use the built-in help system aggressively. Don't be afraid to go on detours when an intriguing function or variable meets your eye. - Spend some time browsing the descriptions of packages in the `list-packages' buffer to find interesting packages, and read their source code. - Read the Intro to Elisp (note: I think I used a 3rd party alternative tutorial somewhere, not sure which one) and use the Elisp manual more as a reference. Take as much time as necessary to digest anything that seems confusing. A few things aren't super intuitive on first read, for example the precedence relationship among various keymaps. Make diagrams! - Contribute some bugfixes and new features to packages you are using. Start small. - Use the Emacs Wiki as a secondary resource.