I find it's easier to jump right in and only refer to the docs when I get stuck or need something. I'm too impatient to read the entire docs first except in rare circumstances (I read all of zeroMQ docs before using it... the docs are very well written and quite entertaining. I read all of redux-saga docs because the concepts were fascinating to me).
However, this practice has also bitten me. I jumped into Durandal two years ago for client-side SPA development and ended up doing a lot of things the hard way. Took a while to restructure the code to 'go with the grain'. But then, the Durandal docs (much like Webpack docs) are absolutely terrible.