In my limited experience, it's natural to learn things by looking at a problem I want to solve, looking at solutions, and then looking at how to adapt solutions

In my limited experience, it's natural to learn things by looking at a problem I want to solve, looking at solutions, and then looking at how to adapt solutions. That's pretty much a high-level to low-level progression. Once you reach a low-level understanding (calculus in this example) that opens a lot of doors, but it's hard for me to imagine starting there. That said I've never been good at schools and this experience is from learning on my own. I think there are people who have found ways to make "low to high-level" learning work well for them.