I find reading scientific articles hard. It's not a particularly efficient way for me to learn. I prefer conference presentations, with gesticulation and animations and lots of colour. I know people who have the opposite preferences, and that's OK. But I’m a PhD student, and reading papers is unavoidable.
I've been reading a paper this last couple of days and realised that in my years as a PhD student I've learnt of a few tools/techniques that make my reading far more time-efficient. I thought I'd share some of them here.