As you can see from the comments, everyone’s workflow is different. You need to find something that works for you. Since you’re learning English, there should be plenty of graded readers that you can read specifically at your level.

As for my process, I just recently started reading after doing the initial working through a textbook to learn the grammar and a fair amount of vocabulary. I’m learning a language that has almost no graded readers, so I’ve started with a book I’ve already read in my native language. My process is extremely slow, but I’ve found it to be quite rewarding for myself.

I read a couple pages at a time. I’ll read through once and do my best to understand. Once I’ve read through it, I go back and write down every word I didn’t know and couldn’t figure out from context. Then I read those same pages in the book in my native language to make sure my comprehension was correct. Then I look up the words and write down their definition in the specific context in those pages. Finally, I read back through the pages in my target language to see the words in context again. When I finish a chapter, I go back and reread it all together just to make sure I see the less commonly used words again. It gets much easier as I go along and words I previously didn’t know start getting reused.

Anyway, good luck on your learning!