You probably need to pair it with something you like. For example, I'm interested in food history and also home food in general, so I made a python script and made a frequency list using a few cooking ebooks in that language. After that I made sentences with most interesting/useful words. Now, before reading any book in a foreign language, I use that script, and make sentences with 10-20 words that I never used in sentences before. All the sentences are saved in Anki, where I have now around 7000 german sentences, 3000 in spanish. I also watch youtube videos with closed caption.

The only thing this not taught me was speaking with people.