So suppose I know what I want in an easily definable and describable sense. Where does one go to get advise about how the world works with respect to that goal and to bounce ideas for a plan of action off of? Self knowledge is super important, but the Sun Tzu quote about knowing yourself has another half: you also have to know what you're dealing with.
(In my specific case: getting myself into a good position to eventually apply to work in the UK 1-2 years from now, given a current background of 3 years in DevOps and Python web dev)
Start with people who have already done what you want to do. If you can meet them personally and ask, do so (and getting to meet them can itself be quite a task). If they're historical or inaccessible, learn about them. Heroes and role models really matter. Find "a man to be emulated and admired".
What you'll sometimes find is that they'll teach you to not do what they did. For example, I'm a guitarist, and a very good one. I work hard at it. I had the opportunity to have a few conversations with the greatest guitarist I've ever met, and extraordinary musician. What I found out is that he's a very small person in a lot of ways. He practices or gigs about 12 hours a day, every day. He can't talk about much other than playing music. At that, he's tremendously deep. At everything else in life, he's a wreck.
So "What do you want?" is "I want to live in the UK". I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that where you live trumps what you do here. It's probably worth asking yourself why you want to live there, but I presume there's a good answer (family, love the culture, etc).
So the next question is, "What kind of work skills will get me a job and a clean work visa in the UK?" This means the people you should be talking to are recruiters who bring people from your country to the UK to work in your field, to find out what they're looking for. You should also be talking to other programmers with a similar background to yours who made the transition you want to make, to find out what worked for them and what mistakes they made.
Unless you have a specific place you want to be (say, London), you should figure out where in the UK you want to be. It's a big place with a wide variety of culture and living conditions. From there, you can start looking at employers in the area, figure out what they're looking for.
(In my specific case: getting myself into a good position to eventually apply to work in the UK 1-2 years from now, given a current background of 3 years in DevOps and Python web dev)