I started using Anki about four years ago, six years into learning. I don't ever use other people's decks, partly because making my own has always been part of my process, taking one more chance to review a new word as I make it before Anki's scheduler takes over. This is also why, for better or worse, I automate absolutely nothing in terms of making cards. This is also why I don't opt for a shared 10k deck as a base and be done with it. The most I will do is highlight, copy, and paste from a written article online if I didn't feel like practicing my Japanese typing on a given day.
I"m most likely to mine from VNs and digital manga scans. To keep from being overwhelmed with uncommon words and phrases, I've opted to mine only words deemed "common" by JMDICT, unless the word has a rarer kanji I'm not likely to see often naturally but I'd still like to be prepared for. With these restrictions, I can usually get away with four to eight new cards during my reading sessions for Kanin, going one in-game day per IRL day.
I've also been adding 10 words daily from an N1 vocab book. I've learned plenty of them in the wild, and I'm just filling in the gaps in my knowledge. I do get the impression that the new words come up more often or are more easily spotted in the moment when watching and reading native content within a day or two of reviews, so the effort of actively studying them from a book rather than waiting for them to come up naturally has been worth it. Especially since I don't like to pause and take notes on video content.
I've also been taking notes on unknown words from Kanshudo's usefulness lists, also as gap fillers for when I get through the vocab book. I'll probably tone down the numbers when I chip away at this word list to make the total combined with VNs and Manga to a nice even daily 10 new cards rather than mining native content plus a different set of 10 on top of it since I'd still like to spend as little time on Anki as much as possible while still maintaining the new words I learned.
My methods aren't efficient, I know. I got to where I am in ten years. But hey, the consistency feels more substantial than what I've been doing for so long. Slow and steady and all that. Prior to this, it was just slow and not particularly steady (笑).
by ignoremesenpie