The Leitner system (and @Pascale-Mandarin_Simplified_HS) is definitely not crazy, except that it’s hard to use paper flashcards once you learn over 100 words or so. We absolutely need to use space-repetition software like Hack Chinese, Skritter, Anki, Quizlet etc.
Here are Professor 本家明’s 5 secret steps to “overcome the character”:
- Learn the most common radicals. If you’ve learned the alphabet before, you can learn radicals too.
- Decompose each new character to understand it’s components, radical etc. Characters are built together like lego blocks - it’s a lot of fun!
- For each new character make up a story about the lego blocks you discovered and how they fit together. The crazier, the better.
- Use the new character in a phrase, a new phrase in a sentence, and a sentence in context.
- Do a daily review of the new character/word in a space repetition app of your choice. This is why the study decks from LTL are so important!
99.999% of people who rely purely on memorization instead of following these steps will fail to learn Chinese 