New way of learning and prioritize

Rushing project for a month, I start to realize that the way that I learned new things was wrong in past 6 years. Last time in form 6 and in university, I was more concentrate in theory part rather practical part, most of the time I just contribute a very small part in my group assignment, I was weak in programming, and I thought after finish notes and whole book I will automatically know how do complete the assignment, I was wrong. I also tried to finish whole book before going for examination, I believed that after I finish reading whole book, I should know how do answer the questions, but every time I also couldn't finish it. I had a thinking like "if I don't finish reading whole book, I won't answer all the questions". While my roommates always got the good result, the reason was they knew how do study important and necessary part first but I was not, even not enough time I still want to study the whole and don't want to choose those necessary part to study first, at the end I couldn't finish study and also missed the important parts. After this month, I start to learn how do prioritize those things I need to complete. Some problem is urgent and important, some is important but not urgent and some is not so important or urgent but necessary. In this month, the urgent and important thing is I have to finish the project within the deadline given, so I need to survive in my job first, so I used short time to learn those important and necessary knowledge and concept first, but don't waste time to read finish whole programming language book, I can learn it step by step more detail after this project is done, because it takes much time; and learning how do fully utilize those resources that I have now, like Internet, seniors and those programming code examples. If I still continue to use my old way to do this project, I believe that the progress of completing this project will be very slow, may over deadline too......