Intention to Read

I was told that reading was important, so I read. I was told that reading was the key to becoming a better person, so I kept on reading. It was much later that I questioned what I was reading and why. I never really questioned if I should be reading and how much of what I read I should make part of myself. The general consensus I heard around was that if you read enough, you'll have the information in your mind, to tell the truth of things and be a god or something—the end was always unclear.
With this mindset, when I encountered books like Ultralearning by Scott Young or Atomic Habits by James Clear, I went berserk. If reading was the road to godhood, then I must make it as efficient as possible; it must be my habit, my general reaction to everything. Which just brought me feelings of inadequacy and eventual burnout.

What I missed from those books

However, I missed a crucial point in all of those books. They talk about the intention, and carefully selecting what you need to optimize, but that is the hardest part! It is so much easier to select an arbitrary goal and attack it with all of my new burnout tools.
Selecting what to do next can be very difficult, it includes the hard questions of the future, what you might want and need in the future and depending on where you are in your life, that question might seem extremely frightening. (I definitely gave myself into escapism more than once in my life.)

To Intent or Not to Intent

Thinking about the future can easily lead one to freeze up. There are too many variables, and the fear of making the wrong choice can easily paralyse one. I have too often frozen right at this step and frozen.
The intention is crucial at this point, remember that not every piece of information is relevant to YOU, and what you consume at this point might not move the needle for your current goals. People create amazing things non-stop, but that doesn't mean you should consume all that there is.
Tiago Forte makes a great recommendation in his book Building a Second Brain. You don't have to make a grand selection. Tie your actions to whatever you want to do at that moment and focus on that, if it goes longer, dig deeper, otherwise throw it away. Have the projects and your current interest drive where you're going. Optimise your life for your current self not a ghost of the future.
The other great advice from that book is to create an action plan whatever interests you and offers a straightforward definition for that interest: Whatever makes you excited. If thinking about something makes you move, makes your heart beat just a bit of faster, that is your mind and body telling you that there's something there. Note it down, and create an action plan when you have time. Even more important part is, when you come back to it a couple of days later, if it doesn't excite you, let it go.

How to read

Read to experience.

There's no need to remember everything. If you're reading a novel, the actual points don't matter. You probably only need to remember the feeling of excitement or dread at certain points. No need to bookmark them. Recognize when you're just reading to fill your time, to relax. Optimizing everything is the way to burnout.

Read to understand.

Don't just read. Have a conversation. The highlights that you have are not there for your attention. Try to imagine the author in front of you. The highlights are where you would say, "Yes!" or maybe you would stop the author and say, "Sure, but this happened to me years ago, which contradicts your point." Make sure to take notes at these points and summarize.

Study for retention.

Retaining something is not an easy decision. Retaining things adds a lot of cognitive load to your mind, so try to be selective here. Retain things that are:

• central to your core competency (e.g., I am a data scientist, so I retain a lot of facts about it)
• things that you know you'll come back to (e.g., any tool that you'll use daily; I retain a lot of details about VSCode)

Retaining has many components; my workflow for it is:

• Read the material, highlight and distil the notes, and summarize in my own words
• Add any specific details that need to be remembered to Anki flashcards
• Delete anything that I haven't used for a while from the Anki cards. Forgetting is an important part of retention. If you don't need it, make space for new things.