I marked active because your described experience doesn't feel very familiar to me.
I either get concepts very quickly regardless of whether I need them at the moment or not, or else they don't click and I often get a bit intimidated by the foreign feeling. The appearance of a real relevant problem may force me to work to understand concepts I'm not comfortable with, but I don't think it particularly helps me understand.
The active style may in some cases help one solve problems more efficiently later, but the reactive style directly "wastes time" only when you're in school and have scheduled times to go spend several hours attempting to learn in ways that don't particularly work for you. If you're not now in school, probably you should just not spend any more time on something you don't yet need than it takes to have roughly an idea of when you might need it.
I either get concepts very quickly regardless of whether I need them at the moment or not, or else they don't click and I often get a bit intimidated by the foreign feeling. The appearance of a real relevant problem may force me to work to understand concepts I'm not comfortable with, but I don't think it particularly helps me understand.
The active style may in some cases help one solve problems more efficiently later, but the reactive style directly "wastes time" only when you're in school and have scheduled times to go spend several hours attempting to learn in ways that don't particularly work for you. If you're not now in school, probably you should just not spend any more time on something you don't yet need than it takes to have roughly an idea of when you might need it.