Depends on the task and my goals. If it was something new to me that I wanted to learn really deeply - and I had the four hours to spend - I might try the LLM-free route for the first three hours like you suggest.

If I found myself needing to do anything unrelated to the learning task, like knock out a quick Bash script, I'd still call on the LLM to get me out of that and help me stay focused on the new skill though.