It doesn’t matter if you’re a light reader who just wants to broaden your literary horizons or an avid bookwyrm always hungry for more good stories to add to your mental stash. When life gets busy, it can feel hard, even impossible, to wrap your mind around how to achieve your reading goals.
But if you’re serious about your endeavor, no matter how big or how small it may be, there are a few simple steps you can take—and several you should avoid—to give yourself the best chance possible of hitting your mark.
How Not to Achieve Your Reading Goals: Mistakes to Avoid
Reading challenges, like so many other common New Year’s resolutions, tend to be set with the best of intentions but not nearly enough foresight to see them through. You can’t predict what’s to come, of course—but you can avoid setting yourself up for failure from the start.
If you want to achieve your reading goals this year, here’s what not to do:
1. DON’T pick a number at random.
Admittedly, if it’s a very small number (say, three), it should be pretty doable—but it won’t be very meaningful unless it actually is a higher number than your usual book count for the year. On the other hand, a random high number is unlikely to be realistic.
2. DON’T set a goal based on other people’s page counts.
Let me say this as clearly as possible: do not compare yourself to others. I know it’s hard not to, especially if you have that one friend who is always bragging about how they read a zillion books just last week. But your life is very different from theirs; you may have more or less time to spare, and you may read at a very different rate. And if you’re reading different books as well? It’s like comparing apples to dolphins—utterly silly.
The only person you should be competing with here is your past self. What goals can you set this year to bring yourself closer to the kind of reader, and human being, you’d like to be?
3. DON’T punish yourself when you fall behind.
Reading should be an enjoyable, or at least a satisfying, experience. If your challenge is public, it’s fine to set up some joke punishments (i.e. having to wear a goofy wig in your next YT video), but never make yourself feel bad on purpose just because you’re not reaching your reading goals on time. (Hint: no one else should be making you feel bad about it, either.)
4. DON’T leave the scheduling for later.
When you’re setting goals, that’s when you should look at your daily routines and try to find pockets of time in which to read. Don’t put this off until later, when you’re in the thick of things—this will only add unnecessary stress to a challenge that, again, should be fun.
5. DON’T force yourself to read books you’re not interested in.
Don’t get me wrong—it’s wonderful to want to read outside of your comfort zone, and I highly recommend it. But you should always be following your curiosity, not some preconception (yours or anyone else’s) about what you “should” be reading.
It’s often a good idea, when exploring new genres, to look for books that share commonalities with the books you already love, to ease the transition. If, however, you’re determined to make a bigger leap, consider setting more flexible goals. For instance, instead of saying “I will read X books in X genres,” say something like, “I will read at least the first three chapters of X books in X genres”—this way, you won’t be forcing yourself to finish entire books you might genuinely dislike or even hate.
How to Achieve Your Reading Goals This (and Every) Year
Now that you know what not to do, it’s time to talk about how to achieve your reading goals this year, and hopefully, every year hence. These tips have helped me a lot in the past, and I hope you’ll find them useful too.
1. DO set specific, measurable goals.
“I want to read more this year” is good raw material, but if you want to set goals you’ll actually hit, you need a clearer target to aim for. For this example, you might start by checking (or estimating) how many books you’ve typically read in the past, and then adding onto that to set a specific number or range. This makes it easy to track your progress in increments as well as determine whether you’ve hit or missed your mark at the end of the year.
Make sure you set an end date as well—and if this is a long-term goal (say, a reading challenge for the whole year), it’s helpful to mark milestones along the way as well to help divide the goal up into smaller steps.
2. DO be realistic about your expectations.
How much time can you actually commit to reading? If you’ve only got a few spare minutes a week, it’s not feasible to ask yourself to read the collected works of Shakespeare in a single month. Similarly, if you have a small budget, don’t set a goal that will require you to spend a lot of money in order to acquire your reading materials. (Don’t forget, library cards are free!)
Be kind to yourself when setting your goals—you can always adjust them higher later if you feel they aren’t challenging enough. Likewise, be open to adjusting your aim lower later if you need to. Life can throw some pretty intense curveballs, and it isn’t fair to you to expect the same level of productivity during a crisis as during “normal” life (whatever that is).
3. DO keep yourself accountable.
For some people, it’s helpful to share your goal with friends, family, or even like-minded strangers on the internet who can cheer you on when you do well and give you a little push when you fall behind. For others, however, this may be a little too much pressure. If this is the case, you can still be accountable to yourself.
Write your goals down and keep them somewhere visible. (If you’re worried about someone seeing them, then at least keep them somewhere easily accessible, like on your phone.) Set alarms or set up other reminders to keep your goals top-of-mind. You can even try using an app to track your progress, like Goodreads or Bookly, or you can start keeping a reading journal.
4. DO consider the reasons behind your reading goals.
Make sure you know your why—and make sure it’s a positive one. You shouldn’t feel pressured to read more just to beat that one well-read buddy of yours, or because you’re trying to impress someone.
Maybe you want to find more time to read because you haven’t been lately and you miss your books. Maybe you want to understand other people’s perspectives better, or maybe you’re curious about a certain topic you have yet to explore. Understanding what you want to get out of completing this challenge will help you set a better goal for yourself—one that will be that much more satisfying to pursue.
5. DO get creative with your solutions.
Have a long commute but can’t read in the car? Try audiobooks. Always forgetting your book at home? Try ebooks, either on your phone or on a tablet you can permanently stash in your backpack or briefcase. Have trouble finishing full-length novels? Try novellas, short story collections, short interactive fiction, or even some poetry. Can’t get to the library? There are plenty of public domain books you can read for free straight off the internet.
There is no one “right” way to read, nor is there a one-size-fits-all reading habit that will work for everyone. So don’t feel bad if you have to change things up in order to reach your goals—how you read, what you read, and when and where you read it are all entirely up to you.
Some Inspiration for Your Reading Goals
Sometimes, it’s best to keep it simple. One year, I set a goal of reading 50 books—not any particular genre, theme, or anything, just as long as I hit that magic number 50. It resulted in me reading a lot of shorter novellas and poetry books tucked into my TBR shelf, especially towards the end of the year. This wasn’t a bad thing, per se, but it taught me a lot about the necessity of specificity as well as flexibility.
In 2021, the number was much smaller: just six books on my list. However, it was much more focused, and the why was very different: I wanted to read fantasy novels by authors from other countries—authors whose life experiences and worldviews would be very different from mine and that of the American and English authors I grew up with. This is by far my favorite reading goal I’ve set so far, one I hope to repeat in the future. The books on my list, if you’re curious, were:
- These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong (China)
- The Ill-Made Mute by Cecilia Dart-Thornton (Australia)
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Russia)
- Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexico)
- Savage Her Reply by Dierdre Sullivan (Ireland)
- Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Nigeria)
Remember: your goals don’t have to be ostentatious to be “good.” You don’t have to aim high to be “doing it right.” Just think about what you’d like to try this year, and why you’d like to try it—and then set a goal and go for it. Never has the old aphorism been more true: the magic here lies in the journey, not the destination.
Kim Berkley is a fantasy author and video game writer who enjoys setting reading goals almost as much as achieving them. Her works include interactive fiction stories such as The Harbinger’s Head, The Dragon’s Last Flight, and chiaroscuro.
