Reading effectively in an academic context is a skill. Practicing it often can strengthen it, just like any other skill. But keep in mind that reading widely (fiction, academic work in other styles, non-fiction, journalism) can also do wonders for your writing style, and connection to the world. Academic reading is not the only reading that counts.
BUT! Even the most well-read academics read for a purpose. There is no shame in reading selectively (only a few articles) or in part (not the whole piece) to get what you need from it. Falling into the trap where you believe you must read every single word of every single piece of relevant material is where your reading habit can really fall of the rails. Get good at critically reading - reading only what you need, and making those notes and the original piece easy to find if you need it again.
The good news: focus on your workflow.
But the good news is that more so than writing or grading, there are a lot of places to streamline your reading workflow, and use tools to your advantage. So rather than piling on a heap of guilt about all the reading you haven't done (we all haven't done enough! it's a hallmark of academia! you will literally never catch up - which is a cold hard truth of this week) take some time this week to audit your reading work flow, and then begin to build your reading habit bit by bit.
Here are the four major steps in any reading workflow. I'll break them down one by one, presenting strategies and tools along the way.
What kind of reading is it?
What kind of information will you need out of it?
What is the most efficient way to get the information out of the reading?
How will you make that information discoverable?
What kind of reading is it?
Not every piece of information you come across needs to be read to the same level of depth, or with the same level of attention. I recommend that the first step of your work flow be determining what level you'll read the piece at. Examples of the different levels include:
I only need basic facts (who wrote it, when, where it was published - things, in other words, that I can get from an abstract and citation)
I need medium level of facts (the examples used, the study design, the main arguments, who it references, who references this piece)
I need to master this text (be able to speak intelligently about its construction and contents, from beginning to end)
Making this determination early (and perhaps sorting your pieces into these piles) when you locate them can help you efficiently plan your time. Only have 15 minutes? Process a few basic readings. Have an hour? Work on a higher level of comprehension. But this way, you always have something in the hopper to read when you find yourself with a few minutes.
Can't decide what level you need to read it at? Estimate down! You can always read something again if your needs change. But you can't get the time back that you spend on carefully reading something you didn't need. You don't need to read everything perfectly, but you do need a system that lets you find information when you do need it.
What kind of information do I need out of this piece?
This is the part of the reading process that is going to vary the most from person to person, and from context to context. But here are some general questions to help guide you in setting up a system for your information retrieval.
Are the authors and their context important? (time, location, funding, other authors they're in conversation with?)
What is the main argument of the piece?
Who is the audience?
What are the main examples/case studies?
What are the major findings/conclusions/arguments?
Is the exact language relevant? (i.e. do I need to take down exact quotations or mark important page numbers?)
For example, when I was reading books for my comprehensive exams, I need to know about the context, and scholarly conversations that each piece was engaging in, with a good understanding of the overall arguments of each one. This was much different than when I was reading for my literature review, where I needed specific, case-study level arguments that would relate directly back to my research. If you're working on a systematic review, you're developing a schema for how and what to search for in each reading, but these questions can help you to build that schema.
What is the most efficient way to get the information out of the reading?
And here we come to the biggest debate in the academic reading community - reading on paper, or reading digitally. I would actually say that there are two parts of this question:
How do you want to store information that you read so you can find it again?
How do you actually want to read that information?
I would make a strong, strong push for storing information digitally, at least at the citation/PDF level, especially for articles. This of course can vary depending on how much data you're reading or what you access to in terms of storage, but for ease of referencing when you are writing, being able to access information in a searchable way is a perk of digital storage that just can't be beat.
Search-ability is also the reason that I chose to train myself to read digitally, except for large manuscript level books (which I did often scan important sections with the Optical Character Recognition, or OCR). By taking my notes and reading digitally, I made all that information part of a large data bank that I could then draw on when making outlines, writing drafts, or working with citations.
But there's also a large community of people who believe that you can more easily engage with the reading you're doing if you do it with pen and paper. If that's what works for you, and you have the resources to print things and can write in books or make notes, then go for it! But I would argue that making the majority of the notes that you create in notebooks digital so that they can be searchable for you will help to make those notes efficient and accessible.
How will you make that information discoverable?
The last step is to decide how you're going to organize all the information that you generate from the reading process. I would recommend that you have at least these steps thought through, and used if you need them!
Saving the basic citation information, for everything all the time, in citation software. Lots of people love Endnote and Mendeley but I used Zotero and loved it - especially since it was free. The important thing is that, no matter what, every citation gets saved. The earlier you start, the better!
Store the digital file. Also important - standardizing your digital file names, with Author, Year of Publication, and Title in the file name. Makes things so much more searchable! Storing them in Dropbox or Google Drive can make them accessible anywhere, or an external hard drive can give you more space. Scanning paper copies of articles with your notes can also make those accessible!
Store the note file you create. You could scan your hand written notes, or type directly into a new document for each piece of reading. The level of note detail is up to you, but having a system where you tag those notes, or include searchable key words, make these notes really discoverable and easy to use.