Is it best to learn a lot of individual characters before learning multi-character words, or to learn a smaller number of individual characters and their combinations?

I'm having trouble deciding between A) learning a lot of individual characters upfront, before going back and learning the high frequency multiple-character words that combine from those single characters, vs B) learning a smaller number of individual characters and a smaller number of high frequency multiple-character words, before going back and learning more single-character words, and repeating.

In other words, is it better to learn the first 1000 most frequent characters, and then learning all the most frequent multiple-character words from those 1000 single characters - or learn the first 250 single characters, then all the high frequency multiple-character words from those 250, and repeating this until having learned 1000 single characters and all multiple-character words from those singles?

For example, according to the the Hanzicraft frequency list, the first 1000 most frequent characters combine to form about 2000 additional combined High Frequency words. So I could learn 3000 individual characters first, or in the same time learn 1000 individual characters + 2000 combined high-frequency characters words.

(Incidentally, the first 1000 most frequent character words combine to form over 10,000 Medium Frequency words; I suppose learning all of those before moving on to less frequent single characters is out of the question)

Is there a generally recommended approach to this problem?

submitted by /u/chinawcswing
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