Oh, and as a grammar reference I used this:
http://sites.la.utexas.edu/persian_online_resources/
Agreed. To me, all content is incomprehensible at some point and ploughing through it is the only way to make it become comprehensible.
Definitely the most progress in terms of words and phrases iâve made has been when reading literature.
For French itâs difficult because of the passĂ© simple but i now usually subvocalise the verbsâ spoken counterpart so it can be used in real life.
EDIT wow i should submit this for correction. Terrible English. Sorry about that, my son is currently trying to batter me.
Well (officially speaking!) Iâm doing Mandarin at the moment (those tones! Arrgh!!!)
But I do find the gravitational pull of Farsi tremendously strong 
Right now, Assimil is unquestionably the single best resource I have for this language - even though I could only get a French teaching version! (French being for me a relatively weak language :-O)
Yeah, they use the formal language. Their reasoning:
ââŠ(âŠ)âŠnous avon pris le parti dâutiliser un persan correct dans les petits dialogues du quotidien, accompagnĂ© toutefois de lâindication entre parenthĂšses de la prononciation familiĂšre pour les expressions et mots les plus courants. Ceci conduira parfois Ă un persan qui pourra paraĂźtre quelque peu artificiel, mais nous estimons quâil est beaucoup plus aisĂ© de passer du persan correct au persan parlĂ© que dâeffectuer la dĂ©marche en sens inverse. Il faut savoir quâaprĂšs un sĂ©jour de quelques semaines en Iran ou un contact un peu assidu avec des Iraniens, on adopte trĂšs rapidement la prononciation du langue courant et que lâon passe sans difficultĂ© aucune dâune prononciation Ă lâautreâŠâ (Assimil Le Persan, Intro. Pg XII)
Hmm⊠Iâm hoping that theyâre right, and that itâll be possible to switch over to the colloquial version without too much pain if and when the times comes for thatâŠ?
(Iâm 100% sure Mike Campbell will use the fully colloquial version when he releases his Glossika Persian course - so that might be a good bridging method? After that Iâll watch TV, maybe try to get a tutor. Weâll see.)
the paasse simple is a pain
BTW I also have some resources from Buske Verlag, and Iâm pretty sure that they use the same form of Farsi as Assimil. So maybe this is the kind of language that is usually taught to foreigners - kind of like learning MSA rather than an Arabic dialect?
When Iâm caught reading something in Russian, people think Iâm from the 'stans. I think I should just keep playing along with it! 
I do the spaced repetition sequence for listening as you do. It helps me stay fresh and I donât feel the need to go through boring flash cards.
I know what Assimil says. I read the same book, also in French.
Maybe foreigners are usually taught literary Persian, Iâm not sure but I did prefer to learn both at the same time. I do like knowing literary Persian because Iâm very interested in classical Persian literature but I found that spoken Persian is necessary when you start talking to people.
I also had a look at some colloquial Afghan dari and I learned some Tajik. I like that one a lot: a Persian dialect in cyrillic alphabet!
Itâs not at all the same thing as the difference between MSA and dialects. Persian varieties are much closer to one another.
Dâyou by any chance have Assimil Romanian too? If so, would you recommend it?
I donât have it, but I noticed the other day that itâs available with German as the teaching language. Romanian isnât very high up my target list, quite honestly. But from a scientific-linguistic point of view it does look quite interesting - apparently much closer to the Vulgar Latin from which all modern Romance tongues are derived.
No, I havenât got that one
If I ever succumb totally to Linguamania, I may just get Assimil âohne MĂŒheâ versions for Romanian and Bulgarian
(If only I had enough time to use themâŠ!)