Can't say I know the answer to your first post, but I had a similar problem wondering how fruitful/fruitless working my way up to immersion would be. It turned out fine once I went ahead and started doing it this week.
Compare, say, spending 350 hours on active listening in a year, to 1400 hours of listening, half of which was active in some way or another. It's less efficient (which usually isn't gd), but you get double the active listening + another 600 hours of passive listening (which is gd). Those extra hours will count. Over time you'd probably start listening more actively anyway. You can't read passively but using the L-R technique puts you in a situation where reading is necessary (let alone immersion), which is also good in our cases.
I had to unlearn a perfectionist mindset of getting things done sequentially, too (i.e. RTK reviews after breakfast then shadowing then grammar then SRS), and now I do shadowing (almost literally) whenever I can, L-R whenever I can, and spend a 4-hour window in my daily routine on ADoBJG and Anki. Just a personal anecdote, hope you can take something from it
Edit: and on grammar specifically, I think it's useful to make notes in your own words when you learn new grammar points, not just reading them in an SRS.
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/product...write.html
Quote:What this and other tests suggest is that when we write — before we write, although indistinguishably so — we are putting some degree of thought into evaluating and ordering the information that we are receiving. That process, and not the notes themselves, is what helps fix ideas more firmly in our minds, leading to greater recall down the line.
I do this for all new grammar and it definitely helps my recognition.
Edited: 2013-06-15, 12:17 pm
