Read 100 Books In A Year – Achievable Goals

Aim To Read 100 Books In A Year

The Story Behind Wanting To Read 100 Books A Year… A couple of years ago you would never have seen me with a book in my hand. I was however always online reading about new things. Whether they were how to code phpbb forums, or photography tips, I read it all.

As time progressed this love for reading took to physical pages as I started to grow my book collection. Hundreds of books later and I ran out of room.

The next task was to plough through them. My biggest drawback when it came to reading was time and concentration. Both of which I felt I lacked to some extent.

Boy was I wrong.

Why 100 Books In A Year?

Naturally there are some true inspirational people out there who read plenty more but with my current schedule, I believe 100 books a year is a pretty good target to aim towards.

With 52 weeks in a year that equates to approximately 2 books a week. Something I see very viable when you think about it.

Some books are longer than others so may take longer to read but then the shorter ones will help allow me to catch up.

How To Go About It?

First things first, I will not be going from January the 1^st to January the 1^st. I started this challenge on December the 1^st and already have ticked a variety of books off.

Naturally with a move to South Africa in less than five weeks, I wont be able to take all my books with me and therefore have purchased an Amazon Kindle for my adventure. Paired up with a waterproof case for those beach trips this thing has already had plenty of usage.

There are a few things I need to tackle first:

1 – I read five books at once – Mainly because I get distracted and need to be in the right frame of mind for the right book. I need to try limiting this down so I can actually complete books.

2 – A daily routine that is stuck to in order to achieve the optimum amount of reading time with the right frame of mind each day. Naturally some days this may not be in my favor but that is where other days can take the slack for the “non-productive days”.

What Books?

I have never been interested in storybooks as my imagination is too vivid to even get started.

When I was younger I loved all Martial Arts stylebooks to help boost my understanding of techniques, history and fitness. As time progressed this moved into Self Help, Motivational stylebooks.

So expect to see your usual, Entrepreneurial, Growth Marketing, Psychology books and plenty more in the list.

Below I have linked to my tracker and there is a separate tab at the bottom titled Books, which shows you the list of books I am looking to read. Naturally I keep adding to the list and appreciate recommendations as time goes on:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14WMpM9gb9WsVcG_Zs6QZslCZ-ZZPM3xNcoY_OmNGeQQ/edit?usp=sharing

How To Track?

Naturally to keep on top of my goals for reading 100 books in a year I have created a basic system using Google Docs in order to keep up to date with what has been read and what is to be read.

The schedule itself states:

1 – Book Number

2 – The Book

3 – Date it was read

The link to this tracker can be found below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14WMpM9gb9WsVcG_Zs6QZslCZ-ZZPM3xNcoY_OmNGeQQ/edit?usp=sharing

Speed Reading For Cheats?

Naturally from University I learnt a lot of techniques to read books quicker and like many others can read a book in 30 minutes, however this technique is flawed in many ways.

You do not technically read every single page and yes you may get just as much out of the book using the 80/20 rule I still don’t feel this is an accomplishment.

If you are however interested in learning the techniques of speed reading I will be putting up a blog post at some point guiding you on the simple ways to read a book in 30 minutes.

However for this exercise every single page will be read and it generally takes a lot longer than 30 minutes.

Book Reviews And Notes

As I read I always make notes, this is a technique I have always carried out since school. Anyone who knows me, remembers me for my notepads and little sketches.

The reason for the notes is it helps me refer back and also mentally remember what I read. A way of summarizing things I have read in a chapter in my own terms.

From this I will begin to write reviews and summaries books for the benefit of you guys, whether you are interested is another matter but at least it gives me something to refer back to.

We have also created a resource page with links to books we recommend. This page is a bit delayed but watch this space as it continues to grow with a brief summary of the book before we delve deeper in full-blown reviews.

For the resources of recommended books click here.

Summary

Now this post isn’t going to be of interest to everyone but it is a way to tell the world what I am up to. As I have said in previous posts, there is no better way to achieve your goals than to tell others what you are up to… And that is exactly what this is for.

Please keep checking back at my list of books and if there are any you feel are missed off the list and worthwhile do message us.

I suppose I had best be off to read!