Most of my skills aren't high enough to get the 2nd tier of them. Because of this I have a stockpile of like 5 perks unspent. I've been trying to explore dungeons to rank up my skills but I guess I just need to do more of that and less of the side quests so far. I haven't even spoken to the greybeards yet. Should I be doing something different so my skills level faster?

I didn't have that problem and I've done sidequests almost exclusively. I've been leveling up one-handed, blocking, and heavy armor. And there were a few times I've put some random points in lockpicking or smithing. 5 perks stockpiled that early on doesn't seem right.

For once, "use more skill" is a valid piece of advice.

@Louis0nFire: Are you focusing on one type of play style? I'm playing as a mage and I was sure to activate the mage stone so my magic skills level up 20% faster. That should help a bit. Obviously spreading out your play style will take a bit longer to build up skills. I'm level 13 and I've been able to get my destruction, speech, smithing, light armour, and one handed skills all into the 30's 40's and 50's, in the case of destruction magic.

I didn't start the story until I was level 15. I don't know how your skills aren't high enough for second tier.

If you are focasing on one play style your skills will level up faster.

Don't try and be very well rounded at first. Focus on specific skill set, and later branch out more. I am playing a sort of thief/rogue character, but have been smithing ever time I come back from quests. I'm completely leaving the blue aura alone, and its working out great!

Highest skills: Sneak (levels very fast), One-Handed, Archery, Light Armor.

I haven't really found any trouble finding perks to distribute, rather I have trouble deciding between many of them because they are all so good!

You sound like you are trying to spread yourself too thin. Focus on a few skills at a time.

it's too early to say if there's any trick to it, but specializing is key especially since everything will level you up. As a rule of thumb; If you're not planning on using it, try not to level it up

You can always put points into enchanting and smithing or any other useful skills.

The first guardian stones you come across, if you follow the path from Helgen, are really helpful. They speed up how fast your skills of a certain type level up. Pick a type of character you want to play and pick one of the three stones that goes with it.

@Cataphract1014 said:

The first guardian stones you come across, if you follow the path from Helgen, are really helpful. They speed up how fast your skills of a certain type level up. Pick a type of character you want to play and pick one of the three stones that goes with it.

Definitely this for around the first several levels or so. If you are like me and want to be diverse and not locked into a typical path of just warrior, mage or rogue, then after about level 10 or so you should be alright. Just strike a balance with regularly levelling up skills that help you fight, with occasional spots of time then spent grinding out the non-combat skills like smithing or enchanting. You'll find after venturing the world a bit raising your combat skills, you'll have quite the collection of materials and ingredients to work on your other skills with.

I'm playing as a sword/shield using, stealthy, light armour + bow character. I've also been doing a bit of sneaking and smithing.. and yeah, my skills aren't exactly rocketing up. I can't say I'm finding it much of a problem, besides the odd tough encounter, I'm managing fine at around level 15 now.

Focusing on as few as possible definitely seems to be the way to go though.

I've been concentrating on mainly upping Destruction and Restoration so I can get into the upper level spells/perks. Lockpick, Sneak, and Alchemy are also creeping up, but I'm wondering if I should be careful about buffing those too highly and having my skills of greater need too low. So far I've just been playing naturally with my duder and I'll probably continue with that plan and hope for the best.

I've also put every single level bonus into increasing Magicka (lvl 12 or 13 currently) and I just started feeling like that is biting me in the ass. Might put a few in health now.

Put them into Speech. No one seems to like it much but it's fantastic, especially if you have left over perks. The perk that lets you sell anything to anyone is probably one of the best perks in the game IMO.

Spend your extra gold on trainers, always. Trainers are helpful for maintaining those skills without too much grinding. For example, if I want my light armor skill to be high, I have to intentionally play badly and let enemies hit me over and over. Or if I want my speech skill high, I'd have to keep buying random stuff and selling it back. Using trainers I can avoid this kind of stupid grind, and I can just play the game as normal.

Also, on most of these skills, it'll take forever to hit 100 unless you make use of trainers.

Also read every book that looks slightly valuable. You want to be finding those those stat raising books.

The college has trainers for all the magic skills.

It sounds like you should focus on a few play styles rather than dabbling in everything. I focused on building up my archer skill, followed by one-handed. I'm a level 10 and my archer skill is 37 or 38 (that includes some training and finding a few books that ranked up archer) and one-handed is 30. Like someone else said, once you have a few skills highly leveled then you can branch out. Eventually I plan on working on some magic skills.