Good method/approach in improving advanced Drupal development skills This might be a bad place to post this, but here it goes. 

I'm looking for a good approach in bettering my knowledge/skills to Drupal. I have been using it since D5 and I still feel like I am so 'unskilled' in doing advanced development. I still struggle with how to create a custom module or hook alter methods properly (with 1 try and not 10) through the template.php file. I have seen others create some insane modules or scripts and I just boggles me on how they come up with it. 

It's always been trial-and-error for me, and sometimes I get it to work but never can get an answer on 'Why that worked'. 

I have been a php developer for over 10+ years, touched a bit of C#, Ruby, and Java but nothing hugely professional. I have always been driven to continue pursuing Drupal development. Just so incredibly overwhelming still at times. I have high hopes to make the next DrupalCon in Austin, Texas.
I have found the Drupal Examples module to be a great starting point for learning enough to develop my own modules, or to aid in solving a particularly thorny problem I'm having.

There's also the Devel and Dev Themer modules, which help to illuminate some of what's going on behind the scenes.

Then there is the API documentation, which I personally have a harder time understanding until I read some of the comments.

These are the ones I use most; others will probably chime in with others, which I know about but lack enough experience in to form a helpful opinion.