I noticed you said you read very fast, and you’re an academic who has to read tons of stuff. Any tips for memory retention?

Take written notes. It helps recontextualize the information so that, rather than trying to brute force every last detail, you’re choosing what’s important and what’s not and then creating a larger mental framework to fit information into. 

Oh, and if you can take the notes in a form that lets you set up and then search by tags, keywords, etc. that helps a lot.