Pen and paper for taking notes and understand that reading comprehension is a resource that has a cooldown. In other words, take breaks and learn how to glean information while reading quickly. Its a skill and it takes time. This is a decent breakdown of some academic reading techniques.

Lastly, practice and experiment. There’s a difference between knowing things and memorizing, and knowing things is only half the battle. Its really hard to feel like you’re progressing if you cant apply what you’ve learned when the time comes. Practice takes the the things you’ve memorized and turns them into things you know. My advice on practicing is to get weird, have fun and enjoy the discovery of learning new things. It makes the process of ‘sucking until you dont’ so much more enjoyable.