I started getting into reading more CS papers when I was doing an MS while working a programming day job, and I found some combination of the following worked pretty well for me:

    - Getting used to skimming and doing multiple passes thanks to How to Read a Paper[0]
    - For starting off, working through some classic papers with some guidance (e.g. for distributed systems, reading MapReduce and watching the corresponding MIT Distributed Systems[1] lecture for MapReduce[2])
    - Sometimes writing a summary or a small project to use the concepts in the paper
    - Reviewing the paper and/or summary with some regularity. I ended up building a small reminder app that helps me space out my repetition, but Anki or something similar, with a time scale of days, worked as well. For me, this was less about flash card memorization and more about a reminder to review.

At this point I feel pretty comfortable jumping into new papers from a few different areas, though I still do plenty of googling and adding other papers to my list.

[0]: https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPape...

[1]: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/

[2]: http://nil.csail.mit.edu/6.824/2021/schedule.html