It is so much more enjoyable working with materials and textures when you are NOT working with a tutorial. Tutorials point you in the correct direction, all the time with little or no explanation of what is happening when you make ajustements to the multitude of variables. Doing it yourself gives you a much more indepth learning experience, as long as you take notes of what happened when you made your changes. A trick I learned was if you are not sure what a setting will do, make a very drastic change so what you did will be very noticeable. Then back off on the adjustment so you understand exactly what is happening. At least that technique works for me.