After my bachelor's degree graduation in September 2018, I had a couple of free months before I landed on my first job. I was in the Netherlands and lived in a dorm room, so I didn't have many options for spending my free time such as watching TV. One day, I visited the University of Groningen's library and found a good book to read (which I reviewed in this post), and since then I kept adding up the books that I have read.
Fast forward to July 2020, I have read quite a lot of books so far and update my progress every now and then on my Goodreads account. I find this app useful for us book lovers so that we can know what and how many books we have read, and we can find books to read through the catalogs. My personal favorite is the annual reading challenge and it motivates me these days for a bigger challenge!
This year, 2020, I challenge myself to read 50 books, that is a book a week. I had a lazy beginning in the first quartile of the year, but thankfully I am motivated these days and have read 20 books so far (that is 40% of the target, yeay!). As I am writing this post, I am halfway through reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey. I keep my reading list dynamic between fiction and non-fiction, with my main fiction reading lists this year being the works of Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson books :}, big fan!).
Aside from this year's challenge, I want to challenge myself to read a book every month that I have lived. So that means per July 2020, for the 24 years and 5 months that I have lived (so far), I should have read 293 books. Now I have only read 84 books, far from my target. I know..., big homework is coming up. But, it's not a challenge if it's not hard, right?
The question is: how can I win from this challenge? I did some calculations, and by December 2025, I can surpass my target if I read 50 books every year. My target in December 2025 will be 358 books (whoa! that's a lot of books) for 29 years and 10 months of my life (double whoa!, 2 months before turning 30). If I successfully finish this year's challenge, I will have 114 books on my list, and by December 2025, I can have 364 titles on it. So that's it. Five years. Should be fun!
Notice the exclamation mark earlier. Well, I am not lying if I feel pessimistic about this challenge. I can also hear myself asking: "Should be fun?" or saying the sarcastic tone of: "Should be fun." instead of being excited about this challenge. But, but... I know that I need a big challenge, sometimes the impossible ones, to motivate myself. In this way, I can at least try and remind myself every time I feel demotivated to accomplish it.
Although five years seems like a long time and 358 books seem quite a task, I hope throughout the process I can create a good habit of reading books regularly. Especially during this time that we spend much of our time on social media, I think reading books can be a good and healthy alternative for us. Happy reading!
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