First off, I know you're going to say something along the lines of, "Oh yeah, those summer reading challenges that I used to do back in 1st-grade. It was nice but there's
no way I'd read books according to some challenge now."
I know we both cheated on those reading challenges (if you didn't, props to you)- my school gave us popsicles if we did it.
And this summer reading challenge won't require you to fill out a form and make your own goal using text, you can just decide how much you want to read based on how much you want to read, not some goal you have to meet if you want a popsicle.
So how are we going to structure this "reading challenge"?
I've never created one of these before so I don't have any "practice" experience, but I have read enough "I read x amount of books in x days" posts on
Medium (
my medium).
There's a couple of options you can go for when deciding what kind of challenge you go for:
1. Over the summer, I'll read x books.
This is the one I'm personally using over the summer: I want to read 12 books over 2 months while taking notes on each book.
This- it's not a challenge, it's a goal- goal works well if you're able to meet deadlines and your reading speed is somewhat consistent.
You can set mini-deadlines for yourself if you want (I need to finish x books this month and then y books next month so I can achieve z books over the summer and to do that I need to read w books this week and v books next week) or you can trust your subconscious to keep you in check.
Be worried, though, because if you get off track on this goal it can be hard to motivate yourself to get back on track. This is why mini-deadlines can be VERY helpful because if, in my example of 12 books over 2 months, if I slip a week I've lost 1 1/2 books. I can reasonably make up 1 1/2 books with my time over the summer over the next weeks or the next couple of weeks, but if I thought about how off-track I am for the entire goal, I'd be screwed.
That wasn't the strongest paragraph I've ever made, but the overall challenge/ goal idea works very well if you can keep yourself disciplined.
If you read "too" much (good things not in moderation can be bad, even one of the best things) you can end up finishing your goal early, in which case you should set another goal for your remaining time.
2. Checklist
Yeah, the classic checklist:
Read one book with animals: Y/N
Read one audiobook: Y/N
Re-read a book Y/N
...
If you can find a way to tailor it to your reading "style", it could be a great option!
If you're struggling with reading new genres and being open to all books, create a checklist. You can incorporate Method #1 into this by trying to cross off EVERYTHING over the summer and adding a number of books on there. If you add 10 books, you're going to have to read 10 books to achieve your goal!
The best part is that those 10 books are going to expand your reading and get you open to new things. I liked fiction for a lot of my life but now I haven't read anything other than nonfiction for months (maybe years, I don't know) simply because I got open to nonfiction. When I read
We Die Alone (link leads to my review of it), I instantly fell in love with all nonfiction books- simply because I was exposed to them.
Here's an example of a checklist you could use if you wanted to expose yourself to new genres and read 16 books:
This isn't special, just something I threw together in 10 minutes and you can tailor it to the type of checklist you want to create. Solid option for personalizing and adding more detail to a concrete reading goal.
3. Action-based Challenge
If you don't care how many books you read and you want to read a certain amount, try an action-based challenge- set a commitment to read a certain amount of time every day.
Ex. "I'm going to read for an hour every night."
It's solid if you read a lot of books in varying length and/or if you can only read for a certain amount of time every day. I used time in this example but you can swap time for pages of your book although page length can fluctuate.
4. A-Z Reading Challenge
Takes a bit of planning, make a list of books that go from A-Z and then try to read them all
Example: 1. A good girl's guide to murder by Holly Jackson
2. Bag of Bones by Stephen King
3. Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins
It's surprisingly simple and the planning doesn't actually take that long- just search famous books starting with A or go on Goodreads and plot books into their respective spots.
Going up the difficulty ladder
This is a summer reading challenge and while you can set a challenge to read your usual amount, it's interesting to try and stretch past the amount you usually read.
Different levels of reading challenges:
1. Easy Reading Challenge- A Piece of Cake
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| Photo by Daria Shevtsova: here |
Read just above what you usually read. If you don't read at all in the other seasons, that's QUITE surprising considering you're reading a book blog and you probably should get into the habit since you're reading 1/4 of the amount you could be reading.
What was my point to help you when I mentioned not reading in the other seasons? Other than recommending reading, if you don't usually read much and want to get into the habit of reading, an easy challenge can be useful to get into reading.
If you barely ever read, you could have an easy reading challenge by reading a book a month.
One thing I will note is that this goal may not always push you to jump out of (or into) bed to read. Try to be reasonably unreasonable with your goal and push yourself otherwise you may not even achieve your original goal.
2. Medium Reading Challenge
If you're planning to have lots of free time in summer, why not set a more ambitious goal that'll inspire you to JUMP into bed at 2 AM to read (from personal experience you'll likely fall a
sleep though).
With a "
Medium" reading challenge, try to read more advanced material or longer/ more than you usually do.
For example, if you usually read a book a month, take it up to a book every 2 weeks. If your summer is 10 weeks long, you'll finish 5 books, and if you decide to keep this challenge for a year, you'll complete 26 books, props to you!
3. Hard Reading Challenge
If you have a LOT of reading time over the summer and you ENJOY reading, try a hard reading challenge where you read a book a week or faster.
The reason you want to enjoy reading before you try a challenge like this is because reading too much can take a toll on you if you're not ecstatic every time you pick up a book.
I tried reading a book a day- that didn't last long.
Amazing job if you're undertaking this hard challenge! If you already read a book a week, there's not much more room for you to go from here- try reading 2 books a week and exposing yourself to a lot more genres. If you take up non-fiction/ self-improvement books at this speed, I can guarantee you'll be an entrepreneur in under 1 year.
At this point, you're probably going to be reading quite a few books. Consider checking out my recommendations page for some books to read. At the moment it's still in creation but if you check back on this post in a few hours/ days there'll be a link to the books I've read with a rating and official description of each.
(Also you could use your TBR list. If you feel like your TBR list is kind of messy, check out this post where I cover 10 tips to manage your TBR list)
4. Genre-oriented reading challenge
Like Method #2- Checklist, a genre-oriented reading challenge can be useful for readers trying to gain exposure to more styles of books (genres).
If you're planning to take a challenge like this, a checklist can be a great option and an A-Z challenge can also work well.
Nearly every challenge can theoretically work if you make the decision to read other genres, but to track your progress make sure you keep note of the genres and topics you're reading
5. Amount-oriented reading challenge
Like Method #1 and the Action-based Challenge, an amount-oriented reading challenge is a challenge where you control how much you read instead of what you read (as in a genre-oriented challenge).
Simply put, with an amount-oriented reading challenge, you set the duration, pages, or % of books you want to read every day.
"I just don't have time over the summer!"
You're reading this post. You have the time, trust me, this post is 2,000 words long. If you really don't think you have the time, I made a short post here to squeeze in just a little extra time. I don't actually think you need it, though, because I started logging my days to see how much time I wasted, and I was SHOCKED!
I wasted upwards of 4 hours every day, and I'm not just talking about the time I waste on your phone browsing social media or whatever- do your thing-, I'm talking about time where I'm doing "whatever". Doing "whatever" wastes SO much time.
Make SURE you're never doing "whatever". For every action you do, think about what you're doing, what it's doing for you, and how much time it's supposed to take (if you don't implement this it takes a LOT longer than it should.
You can find enough time to read during breaks or transitions or any free-but-not-really-free time you have.
What I mean by "free-but-not-really-free" is those times where, as stated before, you're just doing "whatever". Here's a post I found on stopping wasting time if you're interested.
Back to the free-but-not-really-free concept, it's actually really difficult to explain, so I'll use an example. Today, from 12-1 PM, I was in my bed (I hadn't just woken up, don't worry) "deciding" what to do next. What if that time was instead dedicated to reading a book? I usually finish a book in 4-5 hours, if I spent 12- 1 PM reading every day I'd finish more than a book a week.
This free-but-not-free concept also applies to time between business meetings, breakfast, those 30 minutes after you wake up, pretty much anytime where you might be busy doing a "task" but that task is neither important nor going to take up much of your mental capacity. Transition times can also take an exceptionally surprising times, so make sure if you're transitioning between two activities that transition is utilized.
In my 12-1 PM example I also mentioned deciding/ thinking. Yes, dedicated thinking is extremely important, I take (am supposed to take) 30 minutes- 1 hour every day just thinking.
But uncontrolled thinking lengthens short tasks into hours-long activities and puts so much delay in between activities.
Manage your thinking.
Thank you so much for reading this post! If you're seeing this on Blogger or Medium, check out havenofthereaders.com (as of right now there's 19 other posts on there for you to read) to see the original website. Have a great day and goodbye!
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