I usually spend 1-2 hours. Any more than that and I get too tired. At my pace it takes about a year and a half to 2 years to get to where I can read and listen. But I reckon it could be cut down if I was spending more time a day.
I heard that training diplomats spend 8 hours a day on the language they’re learning: a full time job. Imagine that. I’d be completely exhausted and my brain would be buzzing by the end. You reckon you could do that?
To add to this, I thought I might also mention that my ability to speak is still not particularly good yet, it’s very rough and slow. I’m hoping between 1000-1200 hours of listening to see that improve as my mental model of the language fills out more completely.
Yeah speaking is always the last thing I work on too because you need a partner and I prefer to be confident in my ability to understand first.
I count my progress in words that I know. Usually around 15k to 20k is a good level to start speaking. I don’t know how much reading it takes before I get there. I suppose it depends on how new-word-dense the material I read is. It’s always a big leap going from learner material to native speaker material but before long simple texts won’t do it anymore and I start reading novels to hit my daily goal.