My personal experience is that it really depends on the person.
It took forever to find a method that worked well for me. I tried things that other suggested, saying it worked well for them, but it never worked for me.
So, you really need to experiment!
What worked for me in the end was to first learn how to write the Kanji and their general meaning.
I was able to learn over 2000 Kanji in less than 2 months that way. The world around me (I already lived in Japan at that time) made much more sense already. I wasn't able to read most of the Kanji, but I understood their meaning. That helped!
In a next step I learned the on-yomi of all of those Kanji, putting the ones that have the same reading together.
I don't know if you have ever heard of the "Kanji Town" or "Movie" method, but i used something similar to that.
Vocan and kun-yomi I learned when I started reading a lot.
I put relevant sentences into my flashcard program (Anki).