Rick's highly predjudiced formula to cut your learning time on stringed instruments by two thirds, and to reach a skill level that will earn you praise from good players:

1. Your ear (once trained) will give you far better and much quicker results than tablature.
2. Decide which style you want to play (at first) and have a number of recordings at hand of the folks who perform that style. Put them on cassette so you can do a lot of stop and start listening. If it is old-tyme banjo that turns you on, listen to Rufus Crisp, Dock Boggs, Bob Carlin, Chris Coole, uncle Dave etc. and then read about these people and find out what stoked the fires and made them masters of their instruments. You'll learn so much faster if you don't take a superficial approach.
3.Learn three chords: G, C, and D7, and then sing or hum (to yourself if you're shy) from an entry level folk music song book,(always start with the "G") pieces like Skip to My Lou, 'Comin Round the Mountain, Tom Dooley, Old Grey Mare, Froggy, etc. while strumming your three chords. Ignore the chords in the book, and after about 3 days of this (some take a bit longer) you'll find that the chords you choose are starting to be the right ones more often than not. This is how you train your ear, and it won't take long.
4. Only now, start adding a chord every 3 or 4 days, ie. an Am, or Em and try to find simple songs to sing, that you can use the new chord in.
5. If it's guitar your learning, buy a capo, and try singing your songs with the capo on the first up to the sixth fret. This is how you'll find where your voice is at and once again really helps the ear training.

Within about 3 or 4 weeks following this method you should be able to play along in a rudimentary fashion with quite a number of fairly simple songs, and you'll be developing "feel" which is by far the most important thing in the making of a good musician.
If anyone's interested I'll post the second part of my (highly prejudiced) method a bit later. Good pickin'
rick