Some things that help me: 1) Echoing what someone has already said, a big key is to do a little each day. Before doing that, I would try to read whole chapters

Some things that help me: 1) Echoing what someone has already said, a big key is to do a little each day. Before doing that, I would try to read whole chapters of books at a time and feel overwhelmed. Setting aside 30 minutes each day and sticking to it, even if you feel you have more energy at the end, is the way to go. Progress will be slow, and it'll take you months to read a book. But you'll learn a lot this way, and the sporadic bursts accomplish much less in my experience. 2) When choosing what to read, I tend to go for books that are fundamental. I do ML/stats work, so that tends to be math books on probability, linear algebra, stuff like that. These also tend to be the books that require the greatest mental effort. 3) Watching stuff on YouTube isn't a bad thing! The books I got the most out of were those that also had an online lecture series.