This may sound dumb but i spend the majority of the day yesterday on the TPF and i learned more in 1 day than i have in the last 2 years! once i got home from work i sat down at my computer ready to make some phat beatz and then i felt super overwhelmed and kind of limited by my new found knowledge. normally i don't think twice about anything and go to town in FL Studio but now i have all of this new knowledge that's sitting in the back of my head causing me to second guess my production. its hard to describe. should i just go for it and then come back around and apply what iv learned? or apply what i learned as i go? i guess my creative process needs changed up a bit. Recommendations?

I agree with what a lot of people have said already. everything comes with practice and research, so let me offer you my process when i learn new techniques. When i learn a major new technique such as parallel processing or multi band compression for example (everyone should learn both of those things btw), i open up a blank project and i just make a simple 16 bar loop and i play around with it until i understand how to get what i want out of it. once you feel like your starting to understand those concepts, start building on that 16 bar loop and see what you can do! You don't have to release every song you write. I personally write 5 to 10 tracks for every 1 that i release and i feel that it's better that way.

while there are guidelines and recommendations that you can follow when it comes to production, just remember that every single rule can be broken and mangled into something amazing. but also take into mind that if you dont know rules, you cannot break them intentionally

another good way to gather the knowledge you've earned here is to keep yourself a private journal. dont copy articles word for word but rather write down what you personally took from the article and be sure to reference it in the future.

take it all one step at a time bud! good luck!

Massive 100%, i literally use it for almost everything. i like it mainly because of the endless modulation possibilities and options you have.

i also really like using kontakt and reaktor, both are super awesome. you can really find some amazing libraries out there for kontakt

sylenth1 is okay but kind of boring tbh, i can do everything in massive that i can in sylenth for the most part in terms of end product

im also a huge fan of hamor for re sampling and mangling.

Synplant is also REAAAALLLYYY cool for weird ass sounds in a really weird unique way. i only used the trial and didn't really get a lot of time with it but i loved it.