In January, I decided I was going to read a lot more this year. Not just that, I was going to consciously track how many books I read on Goodreads.
I decided on the modest number of 30 even though many other readers have ambitious goals like 200 books. No, I was going to keep a very minimal number and use it to encourage myself to read more. It would also be a way to keep a record of everything I read in the year.
I started enthusiastically enough and even had a couple of some really wonderful hours reading than I have had in a long time. But then, very soon after I started this reading challenge, reading started to feel very laborious. It started to feel like production.
In fact, reading, something I absolutely love, stopped being pleasurable after the first few books I read. More and more, I was thinking about things like how I could read a greater number of books, how I could finish a book faster instead of reading it slowly, and how I “should” read diverse, “worthy” books. Instead of feeling joyful, the whole process started feeling like a burden.
It was then that I thought of how I have never finished a challenge like this. Never. I love to read. I read a lot. I am always reading multiple books at one time. And yet, I have never completed any book challenge I ever started in the past.
I think it’s because it makes a “goal” out of something I normally do for pleasure and love. It makes it mechanical, a thing where you try to tick a box and count progress and get hung up on numbers. From now on, I don’t think I will ever do a reading challenge again. I think it doesn’t matter to me whether I read two books or two hundred books in a year. It’s a false number. I think what matters to me is that I enjoy the process and get engrossed in it. I think what matters is that I feel pulled by it, instead of pushing towards it.
I expect I will find many wonderful books this year, but I am done with counting. For me, the process is the reward, not reaching the goal.
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