By "preventing distractions" do you mean avoiding procrastination or not giving in to the shiny object syndrome and starting to work on other projects?
It depends on your definition of "intelligent life", but if you're talking about a life form that we, humans could observe and interact with using our few senses then I'm afraid that the answer is "no". Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler and Toby Ord recently published a paper that demonstrate a substantial probability that we're alone our galaxy and perhaps observable universe: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404
1. Don't try to remember every details of the books. Just cruising through will update your mental model of the world and your brain will assimilate concepts that are relevant to you at that point in time. Also, great books are meant to be read multiple times so don't fall the fear of missing out.
2. If you aren't naturally devouring the book out of curiosity, chances are that the book simply isn't good. Put it down and pick another one. There are hundreds of incredible books that might change your life, the hard part is finding them ;)
If you're using macOS, you can use Quicktime Player to record your screen (File > New Screen Recording). If you need more advanced features like mouse click effect or keystroke display, ScreenFlow is a very good (paid) alternative.