I think one effective way to navigate the "Desert of Despair" is to join another project first. That gives you the focus you need and set of practices and libra

I think one effective way to navigate the "Desert of Despair" is to join another project first. That gives you the focus you need and set of practices and libraries/language/frameworks to learn deeply. And as you learn how senior people in the project make their decisions and hear stories about the history of the project you gain context and valuable information for the next stage. Much of what I've learned I learned by working with or lurking in the communities of open source projects.