Sticking to what you want to understand - for example, when reading a paper, you don't necessarily need to read the methodology, especially if it's out of your field. Read the abstract and the conclusion, identify any part of it that you are suprised by and would like further explanation, and go see that part of the paper.

A lot of the paper is talking to peer and people wanting to verify the validity of the paper - by it being peer reviewed, you can mostly assume that the paper is valid, and stick to what the paper is saying instead of it's methodology.

You would at least skim over the whole thing without being distracted by snippets or phrases you don't understand. That's the whole point: you need the ability to have temporary placeholders for concepts you don't know and continue learning. You cannot expect that everything you learn will be arranged in a fashion such that every new concept only mentions already known concepts.