@Hillbilly_picker I would probably say this in general about learning music, especially for someone with limited time.
Music learning can be best worked out if practice is done in developing skills in this order 1. sight reading, 2. playing by ear, 3. creativity/imagination. You don’t have to complete one area to go to the other but sufficient practice would be good to move to the next one in that order.
Before you do that, you require some basic music theory to get optimum use in these practice areas.
In sight reading, you work on all the techniques - pick hand fundamental, clean picking, hammer-on, pull-off, slide, finger picking, cross picking, double stop etc. etc. In Ben’s lessons you learn these techniques. At the end of the lessons, you not only complete a song that gets you well versed in one or more of these techniques but the arrangements nice for public performance too.
As part of sight reading, you also work on chords and different scale patterns just to develop muscle memory. The lessons incorporate these too for the songs, but learning more chords and scale patterns help too.
As you learn sight reading, you can move on to playing by ear, and creativity/imagination. The problem sometimes is, you become so lazy and dependent on tabs that you don’t move on to develop the other skills. (Then you would need someone to come and say, throw your tabs out of window! )
Now if you can’t read someone’s tab means, I guess it is an indication that you require more effort in sight reading. So do beginner and intermediate lessons.
That said, some of these tab books are more for advanced players or sometime just tricky too that it would be hard to move around the fret board without all the techniques, chords and scales understanding. So if you take that route, you don’t make much progress. But if you liked those songs, I would suggest you simplify to the patterns you know to play them before you attempt it as written.
Just some thoughts…