This is a memorisation technique I fell into and found myself using, and after a while I began consciously doing it in different ways.
Back to my beloved analogy of Retention Island…
The aim, I am sure you can imagine, is to grow my Mandarin Island as efficiently as possible — to take the vocabulary which is deep under the surrounding waters and take it on a process which leaves it part of the solid ground in the core of my island. Some words are quicker to learn than others, but generally, the learning of a word takes several exposure and controlled uses. We don’t learn one word at a time however, so the image I’m trying to conjure is the island organically gets bigger through lowering the sea levels (the sea of ignorance let’s call it).