By the way: I might be a Linux elitist, but nobody's ever called me that. I use OS X in my day job. I've been programming in some capacity for about 30 years. Your mileage may vary. If you take my advice you may hate me for it, but it will almost certainly make you a better developer in the long run. And I don't mind if you think I'm an asshole. I know I'm right, and you probably know I'm right too.
Finally, if we weren't having this interaction in public, I'd be kinder, gentler, and might not say anything at all. But if one other person who hates reading difficult technical material is pushed to overcome that limitation by reading this thread, it's worth it, even if it means making you mad.
And just in case you're still reading, in addition to reading man pages, and taking notes, here are the other things you should be doing:
Preferring textbooks over blog posts and youtube videos to learn a new field.
Reading original research by pioneers in the field, like Turing, Shannon, etc, rather than their main findings rehashed by lesser minds.
Reading source code rather than jumping from documentation to Stack Overflow when something doesn't work.
Reading Knuth on algorithms, Stevens on Unix networking, etc. In other words, read the classics that everyone says you should read but most people don't. Work through the exercises. It's the closest thing to an actual superpower.
Look around for people better than you at all this stuff to help you improve.
Good luck!
I've read many man pages, many many times, and if I get nothing out of it, I find it is invariably because I am in a hurry, and I'm probably about to fuck something up. The thing to do is usually to slow down and do it right. Only rarely is the right thing to ask someone else for the solution, or see what some other poorly-informed person on the internet thought, although in an emergency asking for help is almost always the right call.
A huge amount of what man pages don't tell you is general Unix philosophy. Man pages don't tell you the lore around the thing, they describe the implementation. It's up to you to infer the consequences and how it can be used. Man pages don't hide the underlying bones of the system either, and generally assume you're comfortable writing a C program to test a syscall if you're not sure about something. So sure, reading man pages isn't always easy, but neither is getting regular exercise or eating your vegetables.