掲示板 Forums - Am I going about this all wrong?

You have the right instinct. No amount of kana drill will ever be enough. To master them, you need to use them. So go ahead and keep drilling if it seems like it helps, but don’t wait on the other stuff.

SRS is supposed to help you memorize, so if you remove a mastery schedule, you'll start to forget what it taught you. Keeping it around is generally a good idea. But, there will come a time when you're exposed to a word so much that you'll just never need to review it again. At that point, it makes sense to remove it, I think.

With kana, that point will come, but it seems you're just not ready to stop reviewing them yet. That's okay. You'll know when you can get rid of those schedules when reading and writing them takes little to no effort. Keep them for now.

I use the Genki textbooks. When it started giving me long reading passages, that's about when I felt ready to quit studying kana. The exposure from reading was enough.

First, it's normal to forget.
In order to memorize things durably, your brain need to remove the weak information.

It's often an overlooked mechanism but your brain always do 2 things: Integrate new information and remove information. It's like cleaning. You need to do it from time to time. Well, in practice, your brain even do it everyday.

And when you're a beginner, everything can be removed. Why? Because for now, it's mostly classified by your brain as useless information. If you think about it, hiragana, katana and even kanji are like abstract math symbol. They don't mean anything by themselves and you don't have any use for them (for now).

If you can accept that part, you will already start to learn faster.

Now, there 2 mains ways to force your brain to memorize: quantity or quality.
Renshuu (and other SRS app) are more on the quantity side. You learn a lot of words quickly with minimal efforts. And don't get me wrong when I said "minimal effort", it doesn't mean easy. It's just mean that you're not spending a lot of effort on each words. You're trying to maximise the number of things you're learning, not to remember everyting perfectly. Especially when you're a beginner. Almost everything is classified as weak information. But it works overall because everything is in the same category: Japanese. And your brain end up concluding: "Okay, I often saw things related to japanese, so I will try to remember a few things even if it's still look useless for me overall".

On the quality side, you spend a lot of effort on a few things. And you're slow. Like really slow.
For the kana, it means instead of just relying on a SRS app (which is pretty weak to remember things that you want or need to remember), you can start to use those kana. It's good to start with SRS to quickly put them in your brain in a short period of time. But after, use them. Because for now, they're still useless. So make them usefull. By learning a few simple words, writting those words, look for those for some sentences. And if you can't recall those words or can recall how to write, don't waste time, just go look for them. You don't need to challenge yourself each time. If you can recall them, good. If not, don't feel bad about that. And I want to stress because it's very important at that stage. If you're start to associate learning japanese with "bad" feelings like failing to remember something, your brain will be even quicker to forget. Because, 1) it's useless and 2) it makes you feel bad.
So don't do that. Instead, do a lot of different things to prove that those things are usefull. Even looking at an apple and saying/thinking 林檎(りんご)​ (the kana only, don't bother with the kanji) can be more meaningful than spending hour on SRS system past the first stage.

You will always have the choice to go for either approach and you can also combine them.
For example, with the kana:

1. Quickly learn the kana Renshuu's schedule (quantity)
2. Start writing a few of them each day or after your daily routine, write each of the kana that you studied that day (quality)
3. Learn quickly a few simple words, 2-3 kana max, with another schedule to see the kana in context, don't worry about not remembering them (quantity)
4. Write those words similar to step 2 (quality)

It's just a random combination that I made up on the fly but it's up to you to find what works the best for you.
It's also inspired by how most people learn kanji. Ironically, they don't learn kanji directly, they learn it through words and have an easier time learning it like that.
Also, none of those are necessary. You could learn only with step 2 if that your thing.
It's possible also to make it more efficient by blocking the words you're struggling with. Focus on the easy one, to get them out of the way, and once the schedule is clear, take your time to deal with the problematic. Don't let a few annoying one get in the way of your daily routine. And then, deal with them properly at the end. One of the best feature of renshuu for beginner is the ability to block items. And renshuu will remember everything for you (you don't to worry about forgetting them somewhere). And that's what allow you to go "quantity" for the easy things and after, go "quality" for the hard part. Trying to memorize perfectly everything with a "quality" approach take effort. And trying to memorize everything with only a "quantity" approach will only result with weak knowledge (and forgetting a lot of things too).

Anyway, I'm happy to see a beginner trying to take it slow but hesitating at the same time

Yes, you will slow yourself. But no, it's not for "no reason". But at the same time, it's up to you. Don't be swayed neither by what you're learning at the moment or the advises that you recieving (including mine). Just pay attention to that but in the end, you have to think a bit about you, what you need and what you want to do. And take a decision based on that. That's the best way to learn faster.

Oh and again, it's normal to forget. It's literaly a mechanism of your brain: Remove the weakest informations and reinforce others. That's why blocking and ignoring difficult items is important, especially for beginner. In order to let your brain focus on the easy ones first and reinforce them. And after that, you can take special or additional measures to deal with them (like writing them).

It helps.