Drinking coffee while or before reading helps me personally if it’s not something super gripping (most non fiction lol). Honestly sometimes learning is like working out. Building a habit out of it is difficult at first and it is usually best to start slow but consistantly. Pick any book and just read a set amount of pages or minutes per day, stand up while reading it if you have to in order to stop from getting sleepy, just power through it as best you can. Eventually increase the amount of time you spend on it. Sometimes it happens naturally and you’ll just want to keep reading one day, sometimes you have to say, it’s been a few weeks and I should up my time by some amount.

I really recommend picking a book on a topic that doesn’t just interest you but is important to you. For me, political theory and indigenous history fill this requirement.

If this is for personal interest, go into it with relatively concrete questions, and then try to answer them.

I’ve worked with lots of college students in my time. One thing I recommend to them is to pick classes based on the instructor, not based on the course content (something I wish someone had told me).

A good instructor can make any topic engaging and enjoyable. And people have different preferences for how information is conveyed (for example, I gravitate toward instructors that use diagrams and other visual aids, it works best for me). So look around until you find someone that really clicks with you.

The other thing that works for me is having some sort of end goal. I find it easier to stay engaged when I get to do something meaningful with what I’m learning.

Out of curiosity, why do you want to learn more about these topics? Understanding your motivation might help to figure out something that works for you.

I just put a video of a depressed phd student trying to make some money on, like dig, that explains some of the bronze age archeology and history.

Are you tring to study for some exam or just learning about something?