Study-Strategy - lots of lessons fast, or a few lessons in detail slow

Notwithstanding the usual disclaimers about learning styles, and everyone learning differently, do what's best for you, there's no one right answer, and to each his own, etc..., i'm curious if people felt that they picked up mandarin effectively by listening to lots of lessons over a week versus studying them in detail and taking more time.

I'm starting to feel that it might make sense to blow though lots of lessons because:

1) Keeps me learning new "words" at a constant rate

2) the top level metric is better. in other words, i'm "learning" 50 words/week, albeit not retaining new words as well as i'd like, versus learning 10 words per week well.

I do remember Pimsleurs saying that a retention rate of around 80% was good enough to go to the next series of lessons.  If cpod were a college or high school class, 70 would be considered passing, and well enough to go to the next level (at least in high school). Cpod offers no guidance in this area, so i'm curious as to what others would say about this, or what worked for them.