The education section is definetely useful but if you want to go through that before starting trading, you are right it will take time. From memory I started trading right upon getting an IB account and studied the platform along the way, and nowadays I probably use less functions than during the first 6 months. But you better understand properly how the margin is calculated with IB, it won't be much fun if you get a surprise auto liquidation, although by monitoring your account window you can learn quite a bit along the way as well.