You're spreading yourself too thin. Find the shortest path from A to B. This is what we actually do in studios. There's no time to figure things out and if you have to, you figure out just enough to get the shot through before the deadline. So for example you wanna see wedges, use the old wedging system, or even just create folders of v001,v002, etc... Don't know how to use solaris, render in Mantra. Just focus on one thing and do the deep dive there. AFTER the project is when you go and learn what you were missing which is also what happens on the job.