Strategy
See first Latin by the Dowling Method. There are many people who have successfully employed this method or variations thereof. Learning Latin, I am not going to shy away from "rote memorization". Indeed, at the end of the day, this is the method I had to use to learn many Chinese characters/Kanji. Strong foundations in the basic forms of a language make learning after that much quicker. If it seems too "stupid" of a method, consider how doing pushups doesn't really "get anything done" in the world. But by doing this type of motion, you can build strength for heavier lifting later.
I have three books to read and then there of course are many materials online to read. First, I'm going to work through the New Testament of the Latin Vulgate—I'll have to do some more research but the goal is that I get some of the advantages of reading the (source) Greek texts (e.g. preserved word orderings) using a language/vocabulary that is more familiar to me. I then have the two volumes of Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata (Hans H. Ørberg) to learn some things about life in ancient Rome.
Phrases
One way to quickly spice up your Latin learning is to learn phrases—similarly to how you might use a phrase book with a "living language" to boost your communicative power.