On the Laravel News site there's an interesting post about learning "just in time" so you can not only keep up with the latest knowledge but not have to worry about things you don't actually need to know.

Technology—including the web—moves insanely fast. It can be intimidating (often annoyingly so) to try to not only consume the content constantly served to us, but also retain it. After all, isn’t the point of sharing information to learn from it? This just-in-time knowledge can be an unfriendly reminder that, no matter how hard we try, we will have a difficult time keeping up with the newest trends and tech.

[...] Luckily in tech, most of us have to keep up to date on software and hardware to be successful at work. But what if we’re swimming in a project at work and don’t have time to look into the new technologies? What if it’s nearly impossible to bake new knowledge into our jobs?

The article talks about methods for "knowledge gathering" you can do in small bites during your day, making use of them to keep up with the latest trends and technology. It also talks about retention, how sleep and training play into it and the where researching topics more in-depth can help.