35 a day was my magic number. The method to the madness was that I'd allow for only having to hit it at least 80% of the time. In a given month if I managed it

35 a day was my magic number. The method to the madness was that I'd allow for only having to hit it at least 80% of the time. In a given month if I managed it every day it meant 1000 cards a month. Every 3 months I leveled up pretty hard. In my first year studying Japanese I first did Remembering The Kanji, which was a slow to get through and I didn't manage that pace really due to several periods of starting / stopping. After I got through it though I knew bugger all Japanese functionally speaking but the language became extremely accessible due to having a solid command of recognizing Kanji and being able to look them up easily when needing to read stuff, so I decided to front load grammar after that. At the time the JLPT was about 4 months away and I wouldn't have even passed JLPT5 (well, JLPT4 back then) at that time. I found a really amazing Anki deck that I don't know if you can find anymore called Kanji Oddysee 2001. It contained 2000 sentences which covered up to I would say around about JLPT2 grammar as well as teaching vocab + readings for the 2000~ Joyou Kanji (hence the name). The cards also had audio as well. So given 4 months and 2000 cards with 2 card types I smashed out 4000 cards and sat the JLPT2 after just under a year of study. I think I needed 60% to pass at the time and got like 55%? So, not a pass but I took it more as an impossible challenge than anything, and was stunningly happy with the result. After that I had a vocab of around a couple thousand words, a decent command of grammar, and some limited ability to converse. I just turned my efforts towards building a vocab deck at 35 words a day. I managed to add another 10k vocab in that second year after which point conversation was fluid and I was reading novels (still needed a dictionary for that, but it was huge at the time). I got in some Japanese room mates too and we had loads of parties. Hands down one of the fondest times of my life.