What works for me is dedicating large chunks of time either on my weekend or after work, drinking some caffeine, and also taking breaks about once every hour for super dense stuff or every couple hours for less dense stuff.

Highly technical stuff is very hard to get into the frame of mind for and so you don't want to be doing stupid little 30 minute sessions over and over because that wastes warm-up and cool-down time. IMO, much better to get warmed up and then take in as much as I can while my brain is fresh and ready.

I go to school full-time Mon - Fri, 9 AM - 5 PM, I'm married to my beautiful wife, I do my best to stay connected with my community, and I am a freelance writer. I don't have a lot of time in general, so I keep to-do lists and fit in my reading when I can. During my commute on the bus or in rideshares, while I'm waiting for my food to cook or waiting in line, or during scheduled small blocks of time. I am a slow reader and I like to take notes, so I need to break up the text into smaller, more digestible bites.

Quite honestly, it needs to be short and to the point. I love books, but these days I use them more as a proven, go-to source of quick reference.

When it comes to educating myself, I feel that online courses and workshops are the best way to do so. Even entire tracks can be consumed in small amounts, and each section ends with a review/quiz. TED talks and conferences can be interesting as well.

Technology today, imo, should be properly summarized and not buried in detail since it evolves quicker than the proper time we'll need to digest it, and by the time we do, part of what we learn will be antiquated. It's why I feel this industry is currently biting off more than it can chew, at the moment.

The last book I devoured was "Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code" - and it was easily done in bits and pieces over a month or so. Now, I occasionally go back into it for reference, and re-read something I need to understand better.

Being, at least partially, familiar with the material also helps to dictate how much you'll understand about it during the learning process. If it's unknown territory, don't take on the challenge unless you're planning to dedicate the time needed to educate yourself correctly - which often requires continuously deep diving into other related topics, as well.

How do you mean? For these kinds of things I read at lunch time or in my spare time in the evenings. Start with the abstract, and understand that. Then move onto the paper itself. Then as I go through I research any required supporting information such as methods/practises/algorithms or word definitions.