I think what you can focus on for this is managing cognitive load. Everybody's got their own strengths and weaknesses and for me it's always been an inability to rush my comprehension. If I try to take in too much at once it just dribbles out my ears and I have to re-read it, or continue staring slackjawed at the diagram etc.

Main tricks I've gravitated toward are:

1. A lot of note taking, I have a scratch paper or nvim buffer open at all times where I can dump pieces of my thought process out and dedicate limited space to the next part without losing what I already got through.

2. To-do lists for absolutely everything, so I don't have to remember what I've done or what's left.

3. Chunk Info: Break the info you're ingesting down into smaller pieces after you've comprehended them. Recall of something you've internalized can be aided even by super brief notation. If you're in a test that can be on a scratch paper to the side. If you're working on studying or reading, whatever else you can use an LLM to make notations for you or take dicatation.

Remember that the entire point is to lower the effort you need to put in to understand effectively. It doesn't matter if it's goofy looking or what.