Would love to hear what people think about this. I know most people have a specific number for their reading goal, and I realized that I fundamentally have a different goal than what a specific reading count goal implies.
I wrote a lot about this last year, but a numbered reading goal for the year felt off to be because I realized it inherently encourages people to HAVE read as much as possible rather than enjoy reading as kick as possible - not that it kills the enjoyment necessarily (but in some ways it did and does for people obviously), but the focus is on the number itself rather than whatever you get out of it. I’m not super interested in the nitty gritty of that stuff because it’s a long conversation that I’m less interested in.
I got rid of my reading goal and ended up reading far fewer books than the 50 I read the year before when I had that specific goal.
What I’m very interested in is if people have a system of goals that isn’t necessarily attached to # of books read or kind of an alternative version of the system that has worked well for them. I have now tried reading goal and no reading goal, and reading goal seems better than not but want to avoid the ‘reading to have read’ motivation that comes with that.
Just preempting the comments of people saying that the system doesn’t matter or that it has anything to do with discipline - systems will always guide us towards what they account for and focus on, and I want to focus on reading every day and getting the most out of my reading.
A yearly goal seems like a good but imperfect system that unfortunately has been the best system so far that I’ve tried, but I’m curious what systems people use: journaling, a book log of some kind, a different tracking system that is closer to what they’re looking to get out of reading.
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