To set expectations, it's been more than 10 years since I started learning, so I don't want to make it sound like it was an easy/short process for me either.
But regardless, here's a few notes from my experience that might/might not help:
I'd recommend starting out by consuming untranslated material only for titles that you can enjoy without actually fully understanding every piece of dialog/text, and being at peace with the fact that you might not have understood everything, as long as the experience of consuming the content was still enjoyable. Light-hearted slice of life comedies and titles that involve mostly mindless action can be good candidates (you can give the first episodes/chapters of every new title a try without translations to see how it goes). For everything else, definitely keep using translations.
Number one priority should always be to enjoy the content. If you're like me then that's what motivated you to learn in the first place, to enjoy the content more, so be sure to not confuse the end goal with the means you're using to get there.
Slowly, over periods of years, as you watch/read more titles without translations, you'll get better and better at picking up on contextual queues to fill in vocabulary that you don't already know, not by explicitly looking things up, but from pattern matching on actual usage. This will massively accelerate your learning as time goes on, and will also gradually expand the pool of content that you can enjoy without translations, forming a virtuous cycle. Eventually you'll find yourself no longer even thinking about the meaning of words/phrases in English, having learned their meaning from their context in Japanese speech/writing alone.
Some mediums are better suited for this process than others. Anime is especially great because it progresses on its own without giving you time to stress about the meaning of every word of dialog and look things up, which forces you to exercise those pattern matching muscles. Most other mediums let you progress through the story at your own pace, so you actually have to exercise restraint yourself. Of those, manga is probably the easiest to start out with to learn reading since it's still a very visual medium with lots of non-textual contextual cues, and shounen manga especially has furigana over every kanji so you can learn their pronunciation. Visual novels are also great in that they let you exercise both reading and listening skills simultaneously, but are probably not quite as good for beginner-level learning in either area compared to anime/manga. I'd leave fully text-based light novels for last after you're comfortable with reading manga with no furigana and visual novels, as they're pretty impossible to enjoy until you've built up a really solid foundation for reading.
At the end of the day I think there's no substitute for sheer time spent and volume of content consumed, but as long as you keep enjoying the content and the process of learning itself, you'll eventually get there. Have fun!
But regardless, here's a few notes from my experience that might/might not help:
I'd recommend starting out by consuming untranslated material only for titles that you can enjoy without actually fully understanding every piece of dialog/text, and being at peace with the fact that you might not have understood everything, as long as the experience of consuming the content was still enjoyable. Light-hearted slice of life comedies and titles that involve mostly mindless action can be good candidates (you can give the first episodes/chapters of every new title a try without translations to see how it goes). For everything else, definitely keep using translations.
Number one priority should always be to enjoy the content. If you're like me then that's what motivated you to learn in the first place, to enjoy the content more, so be sure to not confuse the end goal with the means you're using to get there.
Slowly, over periods of years, as you watch/read more titles without translations, you'll get better and better at picking up on contextual queues to fill in vocabulary that you don't already know, not by explicitly looking things up, but from pattern matching on actual usage. This will massively accelerate your learning as time goes on, and will also gradually expand the pool of content that you can enjoy without translations, forming a virtuous cycle. Eventually you'll find yourself no longer even thinking about the meaning of words/phrases in English, having learned their meaning from their context in Japanese speech/writing alone.
Some mediums are better suited for this process than others. Anime is especially great because it progresses on its own without giving you time to stress about the meaning of every word of dialog and look things up, which forces you to exercise those pattern matching muscles. Most other mediums let you progress through the story at your own pace, so you actually have to exercise restraint yourself. Of those, manga is probably the easiest to start out with to learn reading since it's still a very visual medium with lots of non-textual contextual cues, and shounen manga especially has furigana over every kanji so you can learn their pronunciation. Visual novels are also great in that they let you exercise both reading and listening skills simultaneously, but are probably not quite as good for beginner-level learning in either area compared to anime/manga. I'd leave fully text-based light novels for last after you're comfortable with reading manga with no furigana and visual novels, as they're pretty impossible to enjoy until you've built up a really solid foundation for reading.
At the end of the day I think there's no substitute for sheer time spent and volume of content consumed, but as long as you keep enjoying the content and the process of learning itself, you'll eventually get there. Have fun!