I started using Anki again and following advice from the threads already up, I have been speeding through them, doing 10 min intervals about...twice a day. I have Core 1 and 2 at learning 5-7 new words a day in each deck and am doing about 75-95 cards or so a day in total.

Most of these words I already knew when I went through the first 5 steps, so they are familiar, but when I come across new vocab, is it recommended to learn them before SRSing them, so I'm hearing. I suppose I could write out all the words in a deck and draw a picture or...whatever to connect them to a concept loosely before I formally go on to SRS the vocab in new decks. But what I'm asking is this:

How do the majority of people working with Anki learn the new words before reviewing them? Do you just hit the Again/1 button when you first come across them and after a few days mark them as 2/Good? I've been doing this for vocab that has given me trouble in the past and the seem to be sticking.

I am spending most of my time listening to shows on Youtube from Tokyo MX news and listening to mp3s from The Ultimate Japanese Phrasebook and random news programs in mp3 form. I spend say, 2-3 hours listening a day and about 20 mins total reviewing each day. If that information matters. I'm not even using Anki as the main source of learning, I have a comfortable if slow schedule using a textbook  for that. What happened last time was I was spending 40 min sessons in Anki only doing 20 cards or so. I see now I was doing it wrong them and well, would get easily burned out.