Budget enough time for taking notes. The time you spend now will pay off down the line with less review time and increased retention.
Date your notes, and write full bibliographic information next to the date, including author, title, publication, date of publication, city, publisher, and volume number for journal articles.
Take notes in outline form to structure the material, and break it into related chunks and subchunks.
Use the structure of the book (or article) as the structure of your notes. For instance, chapters correspond to major headings, chapter sections to subheadings.
Note anything that is pertinent to the author's argument; try to avoid trivial minutiae. Important points tend to come in introductory and concluding paragraphs.
Distinguish facts from opinions, and quotations from summaries, in a way that will make it clear which is which when you review your notes.
Review your reading notes the next day, and do it again a few days later. This is a time-efficient way of retaining the material.