Your brain doesn't like to work too hard. Given the choice, it prefers to take the easy way out. This is why it's easy to give up on things when you try to tackle something too ambitious - too much to learn, too many fiddly details to get right, too much yak shaving.
There are several things you can do to combat this. First off is energy. Try to do your practicing when you are well rested and well fed, or your brain literally won't have enough fuel for complex abstract thought. Second trick is interest or importance. If you can convince your brain that knowing maven is vital to escape the tiger chasing you, you will learn and retain more than when your brain thinks it is a meaningless side task on the way to what you really want. A third factor that is important is to stretch without overdoing it. Some effort will give you that buzz from achievement, and will help form new mental pathways, without being unachievable.
There is also something to be said for repeated practice. You want enough variation to be novel, but enough similarity that you get to exercise the same actions and ingrain them.
One further point is that you should attempt to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. It is easy to spend a lot of time thinking about alternate approaches or the ideal solution, to the extent that you never get started. This is an example of your brain trying to take the easier way out. Try to recognize when this is happening to you and avoid it by trying to get started. Even a test or experiment is good. This also has the side benefit of making your brain want the closure of completing the task or finding the better solution.