How to conquer the yearly book challenge

Or at least some tips on how you might go about tackling the challenge.  So you’ve decided to challenge yourself to read a certain number of books for the year and you’re not entirely sure about how you are going to go with this mean feat.  Don’t worry; I have come up with these handy little tips to show how you can possibly achieve that goal.

For the purposes of this demonstration I will use 150 books for the year as an example.

1.  Start off by realising roughly how many books you should be reading each day, week or month to settle with the goal.  So, this is how you can work out a short term goal for yourself.

Day: 150* books/ 365 days = 0.4 books a day.  This one is easier to figure it if you do the reverse and think, ok, so I have to read one book every two and a half days.

Week: 150 books / 52 weeks = 2.9 so basically you have to read about 3 books a week.

Month: 150 books / 12 months = 12.5 which means you should read 12 and a half books a month.

I find the easiest way of doing this is setting my monthly goal and saying ok so I need to read 12 and a half books a month roughly and then this can go up and down depending on the month.  I find that a certain number a day or week is a little too much and can kind of get a little stressful if your goal is for a day or week.

2.  Don’t stress.  Just relax, if you feel like things are getting on top of you and you don’t think you’ll make it just take it in its stride.  There will be good months and bad months in terms of reading.

3.  Audiobooks can be your friends.  Sometimes listening to an audiobook while doing other tasks is a great way to squeeze in a couple more books here and there.  Some audiobooks are presented so well, if you’re not sure about audiobooks some good ones I would suggest are Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld read by Alan Cumming and Beauty Queens by Libba Bray and read by Libba Bray.

4.  Have a friend or spouse or even family member cheer you along.  There is a lot to be said of encouragement from others as it just really helps.  See if you can get someone to help encourage you with your reading goals.

5. Read!  Reading is of course, always a good way to read a certain number of books and the more you read the more books you can get through.

So these are my tips on how to get through the yearly book challenge.  Got any of your own?

*or whatever number of books you have chosen to read.