How to study GM games?

I've been told many times by chess influencers that an important part of training to improve your chess is studying grandmaster games. I have no problems finding high accuracy GM games by choice opening by simply using the lichess analysis board, however I struggle to find meaning in clicking through these games hoping to just absorb information. What am I not doing? How can I actually STUDY these games, and improve from them?

I think you should study annotated grandmaster games. There are a lot of good books of game collections, for example Bobby Fischer's My 60 memorable games, Life ang games of Mikhail Tal, Kasparov's My great predecessors etc

"an important part of training to improve your chess is studying grandmaster games" ++ Yes

"I struggle to find meaning in clicking through these games hoping to just absorb information"
clicking =/ studying. Grandmasters played such a game for hours. You cannot hope to grasp anything in a few minutes. Take time. Ask yourself why they did play as they did. Explore what could have happened if another move was played.

"How can I actually STUDY these games, and improve from them?"
++ The best way is to study with two chess boards, one for the main line and one for variations. Cover up the played moves and ask yourself what you would play. Think for about 3 minutes. Then look at what the grandmaster really played. Is that better? Why? Then go on to the next move.

@4

You can use a chess board and a pocket set.

You may find it more useful to study games where one player is master strength and the other is considerably weaker, in this way u will learn how the master exploits the somewhat weaker moves of the opponent, if you study games played between two GMs u r less likely to gain useful knowledge which u can easily apply in your own games

Sadlone there is a lot of bad advice on here. But damn yours has to be in top 10. Hope chess rings a bell.

You need a good chess book. You open two windows on your computer. A chess GUI next to a Kindle window. Use a database to find the game you want to study in the book. Caissabase is a good free database. Scid vs PC is a good free GUI. There are a lot of books available on Kindle.

Boardmonkey is proof of what you to can achieve. Yes study chess games. Before you understand how the knight moves.

Typical American. I can move a pawn there for I am .

No need to get national, mate

Influencers of any kind seekto influence not necessarily educate.

Pointless studying games you can't understand yet.

You haven't played any games here yet so no idea where you are lacking.

Study mistakes in your own games first.  Assuming you've learned patterns in tactics and positions, pick simpler master games like those from Morphy.

I like going through games in books. It's the only way I'll ever get to see good ideas. I'm certainly not going to see anything interesting reviewing oPAWNo's games. I don't play much. I accidently started a game yesterday and won.

Steps on how to study chess games.

1. Memorize and internalize all of key concepts of chess tactics and strategies.

2. Find a grandmaster game that is mention on the chess video you will watch but do not watch it.

3. Download the game and analyze it like you are the one playing on the board on the losing side's perspective.

4. Do it again, but this time in the winning side's perspective.

5. Watch the chess video and compare on what you had found out to what the video is saying.

6. Make a conclusion and generalization.

7. Review it on chess engines.

8. Pinpoint differences of critical decisions made by conventional thinking and artificial computations.

9. Have a standard lesson on the scale of how sharp the positions are in each phase of the game.

I agree that even studying / following chess games by masters superficially can be helplful, because it gives you an idea what good chess looks like, just like watching a football match by top teams gives you an idea of what good football looks like. It will obviously not make you play like them, but it will give you an idea of what you should and should not be doing.

For that, a YouTube channel like agadmator's is ideal. It goes through a lot of games (mostly current ones, but he also has series on Morphy and other classics) rather superficially, but showing the tactics and general ideas. 

As for learning from books, see this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGHf_qMR3uo