As we all know the Russian language was invented to make us English speakers feel stupid and fustrated, and what a great job they did of it! I know I've been there! Sure, there can be times of fustration, but the key is to chill out, have faith in the ability of the human brain to assimilate, and wait as slowly bit by bit things drop into place. If something doesn't make sense now, don't worry it just means it's not the right time to learn it yet.

To begin with, learning individual words and grammar rules and combining them to build or deconstruct sentences is a great help. But as the number of synonyms, idioms, collocations, complicated rules and obscure exceptions rises it becomes more and more useful to learn at the phrase and sentence level. Prepostions are the type of word that are best learned as part of a group, if you try to understand them at the individual level it won't work.

Try to listen to and read the language as much as you can, let it wash over you and bit by bit the knowledge will get deposited and you'll develop more and more of a natural feel for those things that are just to numerous or complicated to learn otherwise.

Start talking and communicating in Russian. So much can be communicated successfully even with numerous and basic grammatical errors. Find a teacher or a language partner you like, and start to enjoy the language and focus on communcation and having fun. Correctness of speech will follow in time.

Don't try to conquer prepositions, just get used to them. Relax, enjoy yourself, spend time with the language and from time to time you will notice you've mastered something without even knowing how. I have an analytical brain so I like to understand everything completely, the whys and the hows. But I've had to learn to leave some questions on the shelf in the knowledge I'll come back to them later, leave them long enough and sometimes they just disappear on their own.

The main thing is to keep going, do those study activites you enjoy, have fun with the language, and don't worry about the stuff that you just don't get. It will come :-)

By miles my favourite way to work on the prefixes is through diagrammes that <em>show</em> the general idea behind them <em>without</em> necessarily translating them. Of course that works primarily for verbs of motion, but also more widely. I have a couple of books whose diagrammes are probably online, I'll have to find them again. Not that I've actually managed to learn them, though.

Prepositions wise, I've found reading a lot - and, as has been said, things I <em>want</em> to understand, such as news, where I actually want to understand the story - has helped me most. Still, there's one I just seem to have a mental block for - just cannot grasp properly! - and seem to never use: <em>про! </em>(rather than '<em>о</em>,' '<em>насчет</em>' or '<em>касаться...</em>')

One of my major confusions, that you'll probably recognise, is the way that sticking prefixes onto verbs doesn't always just form a perfective. Aspect bends my mind. I understand the concept, just not the forming of the words.

The book "Using Russian: A Guide to Contemporary Usage" may be helpful in this regard, it has a good section on word formation that covers the various meanings of prefixes and suffixes etc.

It can be helpful to make use of patterns and rules, but invariably there will always be things in a language that make no particular sense, you just have to accept them as they are. If you try to find a reason for everything you will definitely get fustrated!

An idea:  Find a couple of partners here, and some writen recorded matirial you <em>really</em> wish to read. So the process could be fun.  Memorize songs instead of words.
And reserve grammars and dictionaries for the time you are comfortable enough with the language to be curious enough 'what's the rule here'.

Starting from this end isn't generally advisable (seriously), grammars and memorizing helps a lot... but if you are in danger of promising yourself to never touch the dictionary - why not:)