welcome to the site
about 80% of what I know is self taught, whenever I have a problem, google it and see what others have done or know about it, when I started building comuters, I went hands on and looked at my computer, the parts etc and realised how simple it all is, it is mostly colour/shape coordinated
the other 20% is from here, sitting in discussion threads or offering help and getting people discuss the help you have offered or you discussing the help others have given often leads to little nuggets of information that you didn't know before coming out