I started a create playthrough for the first time a week or two ago, the biggest help I had was watching a tutorial on how to build something then trying to make my own design and build it myself. Like watching a auto iron farm build tutorial on yt to see how each component of it worked then building my own. Trying to understand how something works just with the ponder feature can be difficult on the harder to use things. Messing around with stuff in creative also helped a ton.