[anatta]

If you fall into a positive feedback loop where your mental responses to a particular goal starts to negatively affect your ability to complete it, step back for a moment then chop the goal down into chunks.

With technical books, I get those post-it flags and place a green one at the end of the chapter that I'm reading. In the chapter itself, I place purple flags at intervals of about 20 pages. Now I peg my attention to the amount of pages in those small intervals (rather than staring at some huge tome) and it relieves a huge amount of emotional burden because the goal is more clearly defined and realistic.

I read one of those chunks a day or ever other day. As I read, I highlight all the relevant info in the subsections with two different colors (one for "concepts" and the other for "practical application of the concept").

This method works great for me because going back to read the highlighted area indulges that "fast food" information intake and solidifies my understanding of what I'm reading. Doing it every other day also takes a lot of load off of the mind. A pot of coffee gets filled drop by drop.