No, you're just bad at the game. Read the tutorials and dialogs carefully, it explains everything. If that fails try to find some tutorials on Youtube. I had zero issues in leveling up and got my Fisher to 100 on day 1 because the missions are super fast and easy to do, you just have to pay attention, read the mission objective and use appropriate skills.
Example: i completed a mission in less than 20 seconds because all i did is use Chum a couple times.
Repeat this a bunch of times and i leveled up quickly. The game also tells you to use the vendor gear as the gear breakpoints change every level and you won't hit them with lvl90 gear due to the Sync. Ideally you should just craft your own gear and meld it, and cycle it out every few levels.
Cosmic exploration is great!
PS: the Infrastructure Projects are super lame and badly designed, that i concede.