Any time you're unsure if adopting a new practice will help or hinder, don't adopt it. Go down the road on this project with the skills you have today and apply what you learned to the next project or iteration. Learning along the way is most of the fun but we don't have to apply everything we learned / are learning to our current project. We can do that later, in a future project! If you add the things you're learning to this project, you'll never finish; the project will grow and grow.
Today I'm working on a software app for my buddy Andrew. I'm having fun but the going's slow at times and I don't know everything. It is a forms application and the technology I've chosen to use is ASP.NET MVC (http://www.asp.net/(S(d35rmemuuono1wvm1gsp2n45))/mvc/) which I think is basically amazing, but I'm still learning it. In trying to solve the problem at hand, I read some VERY neat-sounding techniques from Brad Adams (http://bradwilson.typepad.com/blog/2009/10/aspnet-mvc-2-templates-part-4-custom-object-templates.html) on automating form creation in ASP.NET MVC but I don't want to increase the scope of my project; I've got to finish knowing what I know now. I don't want to go down this rat-hole.
Brad's techniques look awesome and like they could save me a bunch of time later, when I have it. But I'm not going to invest in learning it now. I'll plod forward using the skills I have. I'm not a hacker, I am a software developer trying to produce working software as fast as possible. I'm not going to indulge in research activities right now.
Doing anything by yourself is very hard and there's always a better way to do something. There's always something to learn. The lessons we learn on our current iteration or project can be applied to our next iteration, later, when we have a chance to plan.
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