Hey Jason - Great question!
I don't think there's a best way, but it really depends on how you learn best. I would say to try both and:
Try appending/deleting templates
Try taking an idea and building it from scratch to see if it ends up being how you imagined
And obviously feel free to reach out here and we'd be happy to provide feedback
You do have free testing credits for the first few runs. If you're building manually, it doesn't use credits until you actually run the tasks (after the free credits are exhausted)! 🙂