Instead I'm taking a different approach. I'm getting each skill to level 2, which is the point right before lessons start asking you to type answers and take away the word bubbles. That gets me basic familiarity, and I move through the coursework fairly quickly. Then once I'm past a checkpoint, as I have extra time, I slowly level up the stuff I've already completed. Right now most of my coursework is level 2, and the top like 1/5 of it is level 3. So far, this seems to work surprisingly well; it's kindof a crude, guided spaced repetition. The practice feature does actual spaced repetition I think, but I like this guided approach more.
The other key takeaway of course is that the "subject" of a given lesson is a head fake. The vocabulary matches that lesson, but the app is also careful to sneakily introduce grammatical constructs over time as well, and if you don't read the tips (I don't if I can help it), then you end up picking up a lot of those rules organically. For example, "a la" (roughly "to the") condenses to "al" in Spanish, and that was never explicitly taught in a lesson, it was just introduced in a sentence one day. It was confusing... and then it "clicked" and I got a feel for it. That part is very neat.
Anyway, the app certainly isn't for everyone, but as a total beginner who's tried other language learning approaches, mixing Duolingo (for consistent vocabulary acquisition) with organic language sources (in my case: games and TV in Spanish) seems to be really effective. The app may feel easy, but it's working and I can feel my understanding in the organic sources expanding as I go. If nothing else, it also gives me a baseline; I can knock out my 50xp in 20 minutes or so, and I do that every day. I think eventually I'll be able to read at a basic level and then I'll leave Duolingo in the dust, but until then, as a total novice, it's been a good starting point, and that seems to be what it's trying to be.