This is related to the issue discussed in the "Did You Hear We Got Osama?" thread, which spurred me to write down various thoughts I've been having for a while.

An interesting technique I found:

Create a "quiz" every day. For every article, formulate a question answered by the article that is actually important.

Later on, you can go back to your quiz and review your questions.

However, the most interesting part is that you will learn to instantly recognize cruft you don't need.