My renewed focus on Russian vocabulary seems to be yielding results

Last week I wrote about reassessing my approach to language learning and how I realised that I was spending time on output without realising it. In effect I had strayed away from a strict input first / mass immersion approach.

Since that post I no longer practice producing Russian when prompted by English. So when I'm working through Xefjord's Anki deck for example, I suspend the English to Russian cards. I'm aiming to understand spoken Russian only, not speak it.

I've also found a set of frequency decks from 1000 to 10,000 words. These decks are for recognition of Russian only. My work with the first deck has somewhat overtaken my efforts with the 625 words although it is not my intention to stop with that book. 

The types of words that I'm learning with the frequency deck are especially useful because it contains a lot of conjunctions, words such as 'and', 'or', 'but', 'so','for' etc. These contain a lot of meaning and allow me to understand short sentences, or parts of sentences if I understand some of the nouns. 

I wonder if I should have started sooner with this frequency deck or if I would not have gotten as much benefit from it without the studying I've done over the past months?

In any case, I think I'm benefitting from a renewed focus on following the input first / mass immersion approach more strictly.