Reading 50 books this year: My How-to Guide

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I have been a reader for as long as I can remember. My favorite memories from childhood and teenage years is opening the box of books that Papa would send from Canada every 6 months or so. I loved opening the packaging that revealed books like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Twilight, Jane Austen novels, and much more. Once I started earning myself, I could buy books that I wanted and in the last couple years, I have accumulated more books than I have read, which is not surprising.

2018 was a year of trying out new ways of reading. A friend of mine convinced me to get the public library membership and that introduced me to the world of audiobooks in September. This gave me access to books I had not even thought of reading yet and also allowed me to explore my interests further, tapping into the vast collection of the library.

Keeping those lessons in mind, my bullet journal in hand, and with the help of a friend who wanted to create a book challenge for 2019 that we could share together, in the beginning days of January, I have been able to hash out my reading plan for this year and I am excited to show you how.

I started my teaching degree in Fall 2017 and have since bought even more books pertaining to professional development, kindling the fire of my interests in psychology and learning. As 2018 came to an end, I stood in front of my bookshelves and looked at the books I have bought but not found time to read. I thought of the topics I wanted to read more about but did not know where to start. And that gave me an idea.

My good friend, Varun, and I worked on creating a Book Challenge for 2019. We researched the Internet for book challenges, noting the kind of categories that they had as well as thought of book categories we wanted to add to the challenge. Ultimately, we decided on 24 categories, each of us suggesting 12.

With my experience of bullet journalling and tracking, I know the satisfaction of putting a tick mark or a cross on a task accomplished. Hence, the idea of creating a Book Bingo appealed to me and Varun and I created a Bingo card for our challenge.

I read about 50 books every year and 2019 was going to be no different. The Bingo card with the 24 categories (and 1 that I added to make it 25) helped me decide half of the books for the year. I decided to have another 25 slot Bingo Card for the books that I chose for myself. Since my bullet journal is where I do all my planning and tracking, I created the following spread to keep me motivated. It will feel so good to cross off a category on the Bingo card and then take the little flower handle off the category book (or door) in my bujo spread, write the name of the book within it, and close it again! *Happiness*

Since I could not contain myself, I decided to look for the book that I was going to read for each category. Some of these I had, others I could access from the library. Categories like ‘a play’ required me to talk to my Drama major friends while ‘a book with a sea shell / tie / sweater’ took me to the bookstore where I wandered around looking at book covers. It was a website about anticipated books of February 2019 that gave me the book for that category.

I had never read more than a book at time before I started reading my teaching books. Since I wanted to read for pleasure as well as for development (though that is pleasure too), I found myself able to read both kinds. For leisure, I just read or listened. For development, I read, highlighted and took notes. I had just always assumed it wasn’t a good practice to have more than one book started at a time but it was time to grow and this year I am not stopping myself from having a couple going on at a time.

But, Kriti, it is so easy to start books and never finish them. If you decide all your books and then don’t like some of them or leave some half, you are not reaching that 50 book target.
You may say.

Meet: Milestones.

The book The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip and Dan Heath had a tremendous impact on me. It is easy to set ambitious goals but to get to the destination, one needs milestones that motivate us and keep us going forward. They are the secret ingredient for pride in the work that we do and the goals that we want to achieve so that we don’t falter on the way.

The Bingo Card is a great example because every book that I read gets me closer to making a BINGO – a complete row or column or diagonal.

You can spice it up even further. As I mentioned, and you probably know, I buy a lot of books. To reduce my impulsive buying, I have enforced a condition: I can buy a new book, for every 5 books that I read, not including the books that I need for school (it’s my last term!). Doesn’t that increase intrinsic motivation to read? That’s a long-term milestone.

The short-term milestone I created was to shade in a little box against the name of the book for every day that I read it – that shows progress. For example, I started You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life on the 1st. Every day since, I have made a point to read it so that I can put a mark and have no blanks in between – no days when I am not reading. Sometimes, I only get to read 3 pages. Other times, I read a couple chapters. I am finding the practice of putting a mark very helpful and it is the last thing I do before I go to sleep and if I haven’t read anything from a book that day, I get right on it.

My simple spread to ensure progress and note milestones.

You will notice that I actually note down milestones as I read: these are the getting-to-the-end milestones. They are markers of my overall progress with the book. You Are a Badass is divided into 5 parts and it is super easy to identify the milestones for it. Steve Jobs on the other hand has 42 chapters and I note (and celebrate) every 10 chapters.

Currently, I am reading 3 books – You Are a Badass is a physical book that I read at home. Steve Jobs is the audiobook (it is so good, you should read it if you haven’t). Into the Water is the ebook to give me company while commuting to-and-fro from work/school.

And I am making progress every single day! 🙂

As Chip and Dan noted in their book, visual tokens of achievement are important. The milestones, the books, the markers are all visual representations of the time I am putting in and the fun that I am having in this process.

Taking it one more level up:

I added some more game elements to my Bingo Cards after choosing all my books for 2019, 55% of which I already had, 25% I could get from the library and the remaining 20% I decided to buy. Since certain books had to be read before others to ensure continuity and two haven’t been released yet, I decided to add locks and keys. For each book that I complete with a key, I can use it to unlock a book with a lock. Easy right? A little more drama to reading. Haha.

The Bingo Card for my personal choice books. The shaded cells represent books that are to be borrowed from the library.

Summing it up

I have read many books, highlighted numerous sentences, reflected on them, in my head or in writing, with the hope that one day I will look back. But when? For one of the books from 2018, I dedicated some pages of my bullet journal to its quotes. Since I love leafing through my bullet journals, what better place to access the teachings of books?