Are you the kind of person who starts the year off with a reading goal? Maybe you want to read more books. Do you have a number? Maybe you want to read more of a certain genre or read more diversely. No matter what your reading goal (if you even have one) organizing your reading throughout the year is a beneficial habit for us all, yet it is one not many people do. Personally, I love to organize and track my reading. When I explain my system to most people they look at me like I’m crazy. In many ways they are probably right, but I think my brand of crazy is what allows me to be so successful in meeting, and exceeding, my reading goals each year. In case you haven’t read my bio on my main page, I am a wife and mother to two young children (a two year old and eight month old. My husband is a pastor, which keeps us pretty busy, and I am a high school teacher. The past two years I have set goals to read 65 (2016) and 70 (2017) books each year. I have exceeded those goals each year, and last year I read 84 books even though I had a newborn! You may not believe me, but I’m telling you this is possible. In fact, I still make time for television, time with my kids, time with my husband, Skype calls with friends, book club, and time to grow in my profession. How? It’s really just a simple combination of planning and accomplishing what I plan to do each day. I try to not keep myself too busy—I am quite realistic about my time. At the beginning of the year I set a reading goal; this year I plan to read at least 75 books. I then do some math. I figure out about how many books per month I will need to read. This year that number is 6.25. That also means I will need to read one book every 4.867 days. Now, before you totally check me out with all this math, it’s really just simple division (divide the number of days in a year by the number of books you want to read). Once I have that number I plan four books a month that I must read. I also have a book club book I will read every month, but I don’t know all of those yet, so I can’t plan for them as far in advance. I also only plan the first six months of the year because I like to read with book awards season, and I need to keep those months a bit more open. After each month is sketched out with the four books, I figure out how many pages each book that month has. I then add up all four books worth of pages and divide that number by the number of days in the month. This tells me how many pages per day I should read in order to finish those four books. Sometimes I have a busier month, but I like how some months I can get ahead. If you thought we were done, you would be wrong. I then take that number and look at each individual book. If I have to read 50 pages a day and a book is 210 pages I plan to read that book in 4 days. I then divide 210 by 4. Once I have that number I look through the book for natural stopping places. I write all of these down so that I know how far I must read specifically each day. I do this with all of the books for the month before moving on to the next month. In total this probably takes me about thirty minutes to take care of the first six months of the year. Yes, that is a bit of a time investment, but I think it’s worth it because it helps me achieve my reading goals. I also write these on my calendar, which I check every day because it helps me stay accountable. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about how I organize my reading. If you want to read more about how I pick my books, check it out here. I will also be writing more on Friday about how I make time for reading. I hope you’ll come back to read more. If you have any questions, feel free to email me or leave a comment below! Here’s to finding a good book!
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