There's a really good article "You only learn when you reflect" by Will Larson on his blog Irrational Exuberance that gives a good argument for this. Article 
Create feedback loops to end up doing what you actually want to do. Source
"How to study effectively" from psyche.co talks about a better way to record as you read and revise with Spaced Repetitions. Article Archive Pocket
Practice metacognition for personal insight and exercise your intellect for creativity. Notes allow you to maintain context across time. Use High-ROI techniques like Bisociation and Journaling. Article
There's a great article going deep on Kind vs Wicked Learning Environments with measurements about the impact of feedback against standardised testing. Article
A really good reference is the 20 Rules of Formulating Knowledge.
Key Points
You can’t rely on intuition about how well your studying practices are working for you. Intuitive judgments of learning are often inaccurate and tend to produce an inflated perception of progress.
Avoid defaulting to habitual, passive approaches to studying such as rereading and highlighting sources. These do not take advantage of the reconstructive nature of memory, and make it more tedious and less effective.
Systematic engagement with the meaning of your source material is the key to successful studying.
Rather than cramming your studying into an extended session before the exam, it’s much more effective to distribute the time you have available for studying over a larger number of shorter sessions.
When you are studying similar topics that might be easily confused, it’s a good idea to interleave your studying – to alternate between the topics during your study sessions. This can help you identify the differences between the topics and reduce the chances of them being conflated.
You should view self-testing as an integral part of your studying.
One way to do this is the read, recite and review (3R) method: read a section of text, set it aside as you try to recall its content in your own words, and then check your recall, repeating as necessary.
Tools
The best algorithm for Spaced Repetition was developed and iterated 18 times by Super Memo. SM-18 Algorithm
There was a discussion on the Super Memo wiki about getting SM-17 into Anki but this hasn't happened yet. Discussion
Incremental Reading looks like a good approach to digesting large bodies of work while maintaining a connection form your cards/notes to the source material. I believe scheduling new learning along side review of existing concepts would be really good for learning.
Community
There's a forum called "Art of Memory" with people who discuss memory and cognition. Forum