Hi Chris,
First of all I need to thank you for being the person from whom I've learned the most this past 4~5 years since I started my career in Web Development. I learned more from your Lodge videos on the CSS Tricks redesign than from many of the books I've read and tutorials I've followed. So, thank you forever for that!
I always find myself not knowing what to do when trying to learn some new framework, library, language. I end up reading lots of docs, blog posts, watching youtube videos but not building anything. I know I should build something to incorporate new knowledge, but I always ask myself: "What should I build?" I know I could always go with the Todo app or the Weather app, but those tend to became repetitive even when using other frameworks, libraries or languages.
I wanted to ask you: whenever you try to learn some new language or new framework, what is your approach? Do you just start building something while reading docs and watching videos? Do you first read documentation and some books or blog posts?