Difficulties:
ask good questions
communicate your results to people who care
"Mind sized" is a term invented by Seymour Papert, the creator of the "logo" programming language. He said that complex problems can always be broken into mind-sized blocks, and so can be grasped by the human mind. Indeed, most of us (including politicians) tend to take decisions based on the way we understand what's going on and our understanding can't be but mind sized. In addition, we tend to ignore what we don't understand.
from http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5731
In reading science articles, there is a hierarchy of questions:
which field is this paper in (usually determined by journal)?
What topic does this paper discuss (the title)?
What is achieved in this paper (the abstract, conclusion)?
How is it done?
How is this useful to the work I am doing?
Read at least one hour per day. I cannot read more than 30 minutes, so I break it into two sessions.