This is the way I learned to do it in grad school. There a lot of litterature out there and most chances are 97% is irrelevant to what you're interested in. So,

This is the way I learned to do it in grad school. There a lot of litterature out there and most chances are 97% is irrelevant to what you're interested in. So, a lot of "reading papers" is efficiently figuring out if it is interesting or not. You'll never realistically have time to read everything. First read title and abstract. This is where you'll likely eliminate a lot of stuff. Interestingly, I've found that the best point to go from there is the conclusion. A good conclusion will generally tell you the results (which is generally what interests you), plus a good summary of the motivation and approach/methods. From there figure out what is interesting to you. Go through the background or motivation, specific areas of methodology you're interested in, or detailed analysis of the results.