One of the biggest problems I've noticed in junior developers is the urge to recreate the wheel. Which is useless 99% of the time. It's a battle, but someone has to lead the fight.
I like to highlight in the books. These highlights are words that make me think or resonate with me.
After each chapter, I'll go into a Notion Doc and type out these highlights. Then following the highlights I'll write my thoughts or summarize the highlights in own words.
Sometimes these thoughts turn into full-blown essays. Sometimes these thoughts are nothing.
But I still get the reps in.
After the book is done, I publish some highlights and the thoughts to my personal website.