1) Ask the great people on here for help - very friendly place, loads of great advice.

2) Don`t try and learn to much to soon - Learn in parts

3) using maya 8 - turn of interactive creation

create>polygon primatives>interactive creation

biggest mistake autodesk have made so far - tring to turn maya into 3Dmax.

(infact I think the only mistake so far)

good luck with the learning.