Were you vanilla or some prebuilt configuration like Doom? I started by copying someone's (vanilla) config and get everything that felt right for me. Then I went on to other people's config (also vanilla) to get what they have that was different and the rationale behind it.

I'm still editing my config every now and then, but mostly smoothing out interactions with the software. Latest was configuring magit to have a speedier interaction by removing some stuff I don't care about.