I’m the type of person who likes to collect quantitative data on myself so I can analyze my own patterns, especially when it comes to tracking my progress towards my goals. So in the past when I’ve made a goal to read more, I’d define the goal with a quantifiable metric — number of books finished, number of pages read, and/or time spent reading — and use that to measure my success. However, I’ve found that, at least for me, each of these metrics are very flawed.
**“My goal is to read x number of books in your allotted time”.** Using the number of books finished has been the worst metric of all for me. First, it incentives you to pick up shorter books over longer ones, even if you’d prefer or gain more from the later. Second, it discourages you from DNF’ing books that you simply aren’t enjoying, which is just going to make you resent reading.
**“My goal is to read x pages a day”.** This is better than number of books for me since it doesn’t have the same issues of rewarding shorter books and punishing DNF’ing. However, it does still encourage you to pick fast paced books and to just go through them as fast as you can, even if it means you’re only skimming parts, instead of actually taking your time to enjoy and process what you’re reading.
**“My goal is to read for x minutes every day”.** This is again an improvement on the last method as it doesn’t have the same issue of encouraging you to just get through the text as fast as you can. However, ultimately, this metric still has the same fatal flaw as all of these metrics for me: *it turns reading it a chore rather than a hobby.*
So when I set a New Years resolution to read more this year, I explicitly didn’t set any specific metrics. Not 1 book every month, not pages or 30 minutes every day. Just *more.* About 3 weeks into the new year and one new metric I have been thinking about trying is simply setting the goal of reading on more days than I don’t. No pre-designated amount of pages or time, just sitting down and doing reading — as much or as little as is enjoyable — on more days than I don’t.
I’m curious, for those of you who set reading goals, do you use any specific metric? If so, which one and how does it work for you? How do you set those kinds of metrics without turning reading into a chore?
by MiroWiggin
12 Comments
Maybe make your goal, “I will spend time to identify X number of books I am interested in this year and read __% of them”
Then, it’s more about selecting books you like … and I really do think that once you do, reading itself becomes like watching an engrossing TV show, no one ever needs to commit themselves to bingeing x amount of Netflix per night.
>do you use any specific metric?
yes
>If so, which one and how does it work for you?
number of books. number of pages. time spent reading.
>How do you set those kinds of metrics without turning reading into a chore?
i enjoy reading so it is never a chore.
what might benefit you is figuring out how much you read right now. if you read 12 books a year you can make the goal 15. it is enough to get you to read more but not enough to stress you out.
ultimately you don’t need to set a goal. if goals don’t work for you just pick up books and read them. no one says you have to count or measure anything.
My ‘goal’ (not that I’d use that word) is to get through any books that I acquired prior to the calendar year. So any books I actually got before 2024, I plan to read those before the end of the year. I don’t necessarily read them in order acquired, but I just try to do that so that my backlog never gets too stale.
Otherwise, I don’t really set any goals. I have a pretty regular reading pattern, and that consistency causes me to get through plenty of books. But I don’t actually explicitly aim for any book/page/time target.
I generally have a “try to read 50 pages every day” goal, but I’m more concerned these days by what I’m reading, not trying to hit an arbitrary number goal for books. How much literary versus genre fiction? What’s my ratio of male-to-female authors? American vs foreign authors? Those are the types of metrics I pay more attention to nowadays.
For the last 2 years, my main goal was to read every day, which I managed. That is also my main goal this year.
I read 70 books last year, so my goal this year is 71. I also want to dnf sooner when I know I’m not enjoying a book. If I manage that, then it should be a doddle to get my books goal because I won’t be wasting time forcing myself to read.
But my day to day focus is still just to have read something, to keep the habit ticking over.
As a general rule I like to have quite a bit of structure in my life, so I don’t find metric-based reading goals to be detrimental. Also my goals are generally less numbers-oriented. I set an annual goal that’s easy to hit, but really the main reason I even set one is to have access to the reading challenge section of Goodreads, because it organizes books nicely. Most of my reading goals this year do not have numbers attached to them:
* Daily Stoic Challenge: Read the Daily Stoic every day.
* Classics Challenge: Read the Harvard Classics in full. There’s a number here I suppose, but I don’t know what it is – there are 71 volumes, but some volumes contain multiple books, and some books spread over multiple volumes, so I won’t know how many books it is until year-end (and I’ve had zero luck attempting to figure it out online)
* Backlog Challenge: Read or DNF all unread works by three favourite authors, Brandon Sanderson, Cassandra Gannon, and L.E. Modesitt. Another one where I don’t know the number. I try to read at least one a week for this category.
* Nonfiction Challenge: Read 50 nonfiction books, not counting The Daily Stoic or the Harvard Classics. This one is straight numbers.
I don’t do page challenges because it would be a massive pain to track as I read multiple books at a time and the formats are different (i.e. a Kobo page is much smaller than a physical book page, and a PDF is usually somewhere in the middle). Even just on Kobo, sometimes I change fonts and spacing mid-book, which changes the page count substantially.
Time-based challenges also don’t work for me as I start and stop a lot – I would need to basically carry a stopwatch everywhere with me, and THAT would be a chore. I’d be curious how this works for people who do it. What if you stop to look something up from the book? What if you’re reading while you have something in the oven, and pause here and there to rotate/flip or check on something in the kitchen? What if you discuss the book with someone mid-book and look at the pictures and diagrams together (like a book that has tests or exercises or optical illusions)?
I set reading goals every year, but none of the goals you have mentioned are motivating to me. I used to do those types of goals when I wanted to make room in my life for reading, after years of everything else being a higher priority.
Now reading more or a lot doesn’t feel interesting. I instead think about why I want reading in my life. I love to learn and I love a good story, so I set goals based on those desires. In 2022 I retired and had a lot more time to read so I set goals around exploring new genres, last year I created a long-term challenge for me to read fiction and nonfiction books by authors from 195 countries. This year I want to explore authors I’ve discovered over the past 2 years. I plan to work my way through a couple of series and try other titles by authors I discovered recently. I’ll still work on my International Authors challenge, but I don’t have a set goal this year.
My metric is pages. I try to read 15,000 pages each year. That might mean just 15 books that are the length of The Stand, or it could be more. But if I do books over pages, I tend to seek out new books that might not be what I want to read, just to get my numbers up
I track the books I read throughout a year, and now that I’ve been tracking for several years I can see patterns (or that last year was the lowest since I’ve been counting). But it’s not a chore because it’s more information gathering than a goal.
I Aldo do reading challenges with a prompts list. I find it a fun puzzle that broadens my reading, but I only do a challenge every other year so I don’t feel like my reading is always defined by fitting the challenge.
Those metrics only incentivize you in the way you describe if you let that happen. I set one of those goals, and for me it incentivizes me to read more than I would have, a wider variety than I would have. And I will DNF without worrying about it at all. You are acting like you can’t control your thoughts or motivations. You aren’t that helpless. You can absolutely control them. But it takes introspection and asking yourself questions like, why am I reading this book?
I don’t track my reading or set goals like that, but I do completely agree with you on your first point. A goal of X number of books will cause you to choose shorter books.
If you decide to read Lord of the Rings or War and Peace, that’s going to take you quite a long time to read. You could read 5 books in the same amount of time. Reading those books would make it harder to achieve your goal, but you’d have achieved your goal of reading that particular book, which I think is more valuable.
If I decide this is the year I’m going to read Lord of the Rings, and then I do, that would make me happier and more satisfied than chasing an arbitrary number.
In any case, page count, word count, and even time spent reading are better metrics than complete books read.
I don’t set any metrics or goals. I may read 4 or 5 books in one month and 1 or in the next. I see people’s posting and they read 275 books in one year and this is crazy and bizarre to me. They were obviously very short books, and they read so fast that they don’t absorb the material. They are more focused on what book will be read next then the current book. I tend to read longer novels that take weeks to even months to read.
I think reading days is the most important. It’s picking up the book and starting that is the most important. I may read 10 minutes one day and 3 hours the next. I read 0 minutes on the days I don’t read, and I can go weeks or months sometimes without reading.
Just pick up a book. I see no reason to have any other metrics.