How to quickly establish knowledge on a field

One of the fastest way to create a mental frame of a new field is to do a literature review. But it is not a passive processing of reading and reading and reading. Instead, while you're reading, you're extracting key information, key findings; and recording them. Give yourself time to immerse yourself into the literature. Pursue threads that interest you. Allow yourself to stop at a sentence or paragraph that makes a lot of sense to you, look at the citation, find it in the reference list and go after that article to find out more.

I record key findings into a table.