What I wanted to do was start with a few kanji a day (either the jouyou kanji or JLPT kanji - probably the latter since it would likely contain most, if not all of the jouyou kanji, anyway) - say maybe 20, and choose one English word to associate each individual kanji with.
It doesn't sound like much.. But I already tried the hard way - trying to memorize every kanjis on and kun readings, along their English meanings, stroke order, etc.
Needless to say, that was waaay more than I could chew. lol. So I've decided to try again, but take smaller "bites" this time.
I figure that, by the time I memorize the stroke order for a couple hundred or so kanji, even if I'm only focusing on a single radical for each kanji, I'll learn to recognize all of the different radicals eventually because I'll run into kanji that has the radical that was a "piece" of a kanji I've already learned. (cont'd)