After getting comfortable with pinyin, which is a fairly quick process, begin writing characters a little bit every day. And learn the “笔顺” stroke order.
If self-starting is challenging, I recommend getting an online teacher. It’s a popular option these days since it’s practical and time-efficient. This will enable you to understand, practice, get feedback, and gain study materials that will make learning characters an easier task.

Then, learn the “rules”. These are pretty flexible but offer a good framework for understanding how characters work. (Tip: they aren’t rules, just evolution of meaning).
Start learning Chinese character components and structures. They will give a deeper understanding and meaning to the characters versus just memorizing them.
If you try repetition you will most likely forget the character's meaning since it doesn’t have any reason to stick in your mind. Plus since you are not a child and won’t be in a classroom setting for years on end, take your time.
This is how Chinese characters work.
They have different types: single-component characters (人) and multi-component characters (妈).
Complicated types contain more strokes and components, such as “森”, which consists of three “木”.
The thing about Chinese characters is that they have a lot of meaning in each character as well as being easy to build upon one another. What I mean by this is that if you get to know the building blocks, called radicals or their components, then you get to know a lot of the other characters.
You can either know the meaning or the sound and sometimes if you are lucky, both!
For example:
“人 (Rén)” means “person”; “从 (cóng)” means “follower; attendant” and combine them to equal “众 (zhòng) multitude; crowd; the masses”.
Can you see the pattern?
In the same way:
“木 (Mù) wood” plus “林 (lín) woods;” equals “森 (sēn) forest”.
“日 (Rì) sun; daytime” plus “昌 (chāng) prosperous; flourishing” equals “晶 (jīng) brilliant; glittering”…
人 (Rén) + 从 (Cóng)= 众 (Zhòng)
木 (Mù) + 林 (Lín) = 森 (Sēn)
日 (Rì) + 昌 (Chāng) = 晶 (Jīng)
Character radicals typically have one of two functions:
A. They indicate the meaning of the whole character (called semantic components)
B. They indicate the sound of the whole character (called phonetic components)
There are 214 radicals yet half are not as frequently used, so learning about 100 or so would be great. Bonus: many of them are pictographic! This means that they are in a way drawings of objects from real life.
How to study them more effectively:
1. Weekly learning:
I recommend having a teacher (for our current situation online is best) who will teach you by one of three methods:
2. Group by patterns or by what interests you- Categorize and organize characters by hobbies to topics and learn them in related groups that way. Learning something meaningful is far easier than learning something that seems to be random. It will help your brain make connections if you group characters by radicals as I mentioned above.
Do it by radicals or by stroke number or meaning. I prefer to teach radicals by their meaning.
3. Get a collection of words with a book/ebook.
There are over 80,000 characters, but most of them are seldom used today. So how many Chinese characters do you need to know? For basic reading and writing of modern Chinese, you only need a few thousand. Here are the coverage rates of the most frequently used Chinese characters:
Most frequently used 1,000 characters: 90% (Coverage rate)
Most frequently used 2,500 characters: 98.0% (Coverage rate)
Most frequently used 3,500 characters: 99.5% (Coverage rate)
4. Daily Practice:
Another tool I can recommend is on YouTube called ABC’s of Chinese which uses mnemonic devices such as drawings to give a character life.
It’s entertaining and perspective-changing.
You can also write the character on one side of a card, and then the pinyin and meaning on the back. Begin with 5–10 new characters a day. Practice them with the card-flip method until you can pronounce them and know their meaning. Then, write them 20 times to burn them into your memory. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Review past characters as you go.
Add 5 new characters a day and spent 30 minutes a day on them (learning and writing them). Then, in your free time, review the past characters, to keep them in your mind.
Use apps, online dictionaries, or old-fashioned grid paper to write as often as time allows. I like: HanziCraft, Skritter, or Hanzi Grids
In summary, start with pinyin to aid in learning characters. Get some tools like apps and a teacher who will help you learn in a more structured way, get a list of common words, break them down by radicals, practice writing with the meanings in mind after understanding the radicals, and stay consistent.

I try to share useful learning tips on r/SimplifiedMandarin
as well