I agree the UI for Premiere can be overwhelming to a new user. Also, the keyboard shortcuts are clearly assigned by engineers and not editors.
When I switched from tape-to-tape editing to NLEs in 2005, I started a new keyboard shortcut layout that was more intuitive, and was all on the left side of the keyboard, allowing the right hand to never have to leave the mouse.
I made a tutorial teaching Premiere by way of these shortcuts (although these shortcuts work on just about every NLE, with slight variations). The tutorial is long, but if you just go through the first part, explaining each shortcut, you can get pretty far along learning how to edit with Premiere.
When I switched from tape-to-tape editing to NLEs in 2005, I started a new keyboard shortcut layout that was more intuitive, and was all on the left side of the keyboard, allowing the right hand to never have to leave the mouse.
I made a tutorial teaching Premiere by way of these shortcuts (although these shortcuts work on just about every NLE, with slight variations). The tutorial is long, but if you just go through the first part, explaining each shortcut, you can get pretty far along learning how to edit with Premiere.
The video and shortcut layout download is here: https://davidblairportfolio.com/daves-premiere-pro-tutorial
This might be the only editing tutorial that uses as an editing example the editing of the tutorial you're watching.