If you are not doing some type of spaced repetition system (SRS) flashcard system to help you memorise words and kanji, you probably should. Language learning does involve learning many words and unless you have some kind of amazing memory, you will need to go over the same words many times until you have truly remembered them and can recall at any moment.
One of the most satisfying feelings I ever get is when a certain situation comes up which uses a specific word and I know the word. Not knowing the word would’ve meant I would’ve been completely unable to work out what I was hearing. It’s even better when I use the word while speaking and get a visible reaction from others like, “now THAT was an appropriate word for that situation!”. AKA よくしってるな！
SRS is a proven system that repeats information to you over certain spaced periods, with wrong guesses meaning the system will show the word again much sooner and a right answer meaning you won’t be ‘tested’ on that word for some time. Generally the collection of words you pick up overtime to do SRS on will be referred to as a ‘deck’.
However adding in new words as cards to your deck means that your study time goes up because you have more cards to review. When your SRS deck starts to become more of a chore than anything, your issue is likely bad cards.
As language learners, we want to grab every kanji, every vocab that we see in our immersion environment, even if it’s mind-numbingly dull, because we think we ‘should’. However my tip to you is to try and forget the perfectionism. Forget what you ‘should’ learn. Just grab the items that look fun and try to learn them.
So delete cards that do not spark joy. Even fun cards are not immune from deletion. Some cards start out fun and interesting, but we forget the context or we just don’t care about them anymore. Don’t be shy about deleting those. Just because you liked it at one time doesn’t mean you need to commit yourself to it forever.
