Use the index – it’s what it’s there for. In the usual Info readers, it’s the “i” key. This is what I use when, for instance, reading the GNU C Library manual and wanting the documentation for a specific function, struct or macro. If you want the command-line switches for the “foo” command, the node to go to in the manual you find yourself when invoking “info foo” is called “foo invocation”; you go to a specified node using the “g” key. Then you simply use the space key to navigate serially through all the following nodes. There are only three more keys that I use when reading Info documentation.¹
I think it’s mostly a question of habit. Man pages has taught you to read mostly the whole document quickly, while scanning for the information you need. These are habits unsuitable to both to reading a book of printed documentation or Info documentation. If you have a specific idea of what you want to find, you use the index.
1) The “l” key – “l” for “last” – corresponds to a web browser’s back button, the “u” key goes “up” in the document tree, and the “t” key goes to the top of the current document. These five keys are all the keys I use for Info navigation, except for normal searching with C-s, but that’s Emacs. This should not be difficult, but it is. I suspect, as I wrote previously, that it’s not Unix-y enough.
I agree, reading headings and navigating that way is mostly a waste of time when trying to find something specific. Which is why I never do it; I use the Index.
For me the consistent reference-like structure and terse language of man pages is ideal. The whole document is shorter than a bunch of info pages will be, and because of the structure, I always know where to expect specific things to be. Some man pages do not quite fit the traditional model so there is a bit of compromise, but I still find it easier to scan through such pages and remember the location of things than I do with info pages.
The difference between (Open)BSD and GNU/Linux world man pages is that the former group spend plenty of effort on polishing the language & structure to make the text clean, short and to-the-point, as well as consistent. So exactly the qualities I prefer man for are taken as far as possible. And because we love well written man pages, there's a man page for damn well near anything in the base system; whereas on other systems you're sometimes looking at info pages, sometimes html documentation installed where-ever or nowhere, READMEs, comments in config files, howtos and tutorials via Google, or at the source because nobody bothered write real documentation. If the source isn't at hand or you don't have the time for it, you try imitate what you see in use already, and pray..