What most articles and books I've read on the subject recommend: Learn to strum with rhythm. Learn the scales. Learn the chords. Play things that let you have fun, even while nailing down the basics.
The best ones I have read take it a little closer to the guitar: "Learn the freboard" Learn why the freboard is the way it is, why it is tuned the way it is, why no one for hundreds of years has been able to come up with a better tuning system -- then learning rhythm, chords and scales will be a bonus side effect. The very excellent book "Fretboard Logic" takes this approach
Not to disagree with your points, but a brief aside you made me think of:
The fretboard in its current incarnation works well for western music, at the cost of being quite poor at playing for middle-eastern and eastern music.
There have been attempts to address this with microtonal fretboards (which are complicated), but most often they use fretless necks (which are available for guitars and basses).
So, as with all things, the fretboard evolved in a route that favored local optimizations.