Learning Japanese fast - Why not use frequency lists for 80% coverage?

Studying kanji before studying any of the words that use those kanji seems a little odd to me. As you study characters you should simultaneously study the compounds that utilize various readings of that character. If you learn 10 words per character that use that character, by the time you're at 99% kanji you reach 98% vocabulary as well (though some characters don't have many words that use them)

Avoiding uncommon kanji seems a bit unwise to me also. There are many common and important words that use kanji that are otherwise uncommon.