Critiquing study techniques

I thought it would be useful over the summer to have a brief look at a couple ofbooks on study technique. I am not convinced that my current technique is as good as it could be. In general, the problem is that I am reading at too detailed a level and so progress is slow. Moreover, I am not turning my reading into critical writing.

So for the last couple of days I have been reading Fairbairn & Fairbairn's Reading at University. This has been full of surprisingly interesting stuff. I was particularly taken by the idea that you could do as an exercise - to spend a couple of hours skimming through and summarizing four journal articles. I take about 4 hours over each journal article I read, so the idea of skimming through them at the pace indicated is very different to my main practice. But might it not be worth setting aside an afternoon to try this out?