Oh my god that website is amazing! Thank you so much. Ive already been studying from Genki but thats a life changer, thank you!
Iāll let you know when it happens!
This. Very much, this.
My pleasure, felt the same way when I found out about it and now still using it through Genki 2, so always happy to share 
There is also the part of getting competent in one area more so than others. For example, I can read and get pretty good comprehension from some amount of slice of life manga (well modern day, no/few fantasy/SF elements, school/high school setting (more so than any other setting)). Although Ouran High School Host Club just kicked me in the teeth and let me know that there are still slice of life, modern day, high school manga that will make my head spin.
Give me a novel though and Iāll be begging for mercy after a couple of pages. Put on any drama, TV show, anime, etc. with or without Japanese subtitles and Iām likely to be lost except for what the pretty pictures/animation is showing me.
Yet, I can pick up Komi-san Canāt Communicate and read that manga without much trouble. So I have a small slice of heaven, aka competency, and an enormous area of incompetence which basically incorporates everything else.
If you are most interested in one area of Japanese, aka you mostly want to read manga, or books, or watch Japanese dramas or whatever it might be, it can be very worth to focus your energy there to get that to level of higher competence so you can enjoy it more easily. Looking at my own reading history in Japanese, it is easy to see why I can handle slice of life manga (mostly high school setting) very well, because Iāve read a lot of it. And I am slowly branching out, widening the definition of what manga I find easy to read, and also slowly getting easy/simple books/novels on my not-too-hard list.
100%. My reading skills have always been my strong suit because thats what I enjoy. Ive started taking more of a conscious effort to improve my skills in other areas.
I think a big part of it is patience. Iām still not at the level I want to be, but I always celebrate the small little achievements while keeping an eye on the prize (which for me is reading manga and playing otome games in Japanese is my big goal). I practice reading manga just to see what I understand/any WK vocabulary I recognize and notice if I remembered it or not.
I read Crystal Hunters, a manga that teaches Japanese, every time a new volume comes out. Reading Crystal Hunterās guides and then their volumes may help you get your confidence back rather than stressing whether you are doing things right or not.
Nihongo Quest N5, Shujinkou, and Koe (声) are Japanese games currently in development right now. Developer of Nihongo Quest plans to do N5-N1 depending on how well the N5 game does, so you could get that game just to review if you wanted to. Shujinkou and Koe (声) will both be going behind N5 so definitely keep an eye on that.
There is also Lingo Legend that teaches languages like Japanese through an RPG card game. They are working on a farming simulator right now.
You could follow Japanese twitter accounts too of things you are personally interested in too.
Last thing I can think of at the moment is there is a youtuber called Game Gengo and he teaches Japanese through video games.
Oh well that might be why you are feeling incompetent cause you are using Duolingo. I agree with the others here on dropping that. I personally donāt use Renshuu, but I use J-crosswords (an app made by Renshuu) that has crossword puzzles for kana and kanji N5-N1. No sure if you have looked into MaruMori.io but I personally like how they do their grammar lessons and you can start working on their N4 section which they are currently doing right now. MaruMori.io is eventually going to have study lists for anime, manga, and video games too.
I hate textbooks personally so I donāt touch them. The closest Iāve gotten to textbooks is in J-crosswords doing the genki crossword puzzles and listening to Game Gengoās videos on Genki that he did explaining it using Japanese video games. He goes over what textbooks like Genki donāt explain.
Not sure if you are into the anime that is out right now called Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Dukeās Mansion, but you can watch an episode of that then practice reading the manga in Japanese. The physical copy has furigana while the digital form doesnāt.
What I learnt in 15 years of training and I feel perfectly suits learning languages (and everything else):
You are unique and progress at your unique speed and rhythm.
You may (and will) take more time than others.
You can always ask yourself what could be improved to make training safer (burnouts and lack of drive) and more optimized.
Absolutely ignore such things as other people conditions and how long they took to get where they are, unless valuable lessons can be learnt.
When you receive advices of any kind, always ponder carefully if that really adapts to your unique condition in its entirety. Almost always there are corners that can be rounded off.
Focus on short and mid term goals and keep improving through those: is there anything of reasonable difficulty you want to be able to do? Whatās a way to get there in an enjoyable manner?
Try to merge into the language the more you can (but not to the point of feeling overwhelmed).
Always keep in mind that if you donāt truly love it, especially the though part, youāre not going anywhere. But love may come with the journey and not be right there at the beginning.
That is for the 3rd edition. The 2nd and 3rd have minor differences. If you have the physical book, pick whichever edition you have.
Thanks! I have the 3rd edition but I doubt it matters much.
5000+ hours in, and itās probably at this point that Iām considering myself not incompetent. Can watch japanese dramas with japanese subs and understand pretty much everything, some words here and there, but donāt have to pause every other line to figure out what is going on. But wouldnāt really expect less since Iāve been grinding hard for the past two years.
Advice? More input, more hours, more consistently.
Depends on the goals, but if itās N1, youāre like 1/10 of the way there.
The largest problem is that it feels like you are not progressing at times, even though you are. Just gotta trust the process and push on, make the journey as pleasurable as possible within bounds.