From my favourite Julien Smith, that guy who’d definitely be invited to the cool people party. Posting here for future reference and inspiration:
I recently realized that I’d been reading a book every week now for 5 years straight.
It kind of made me wonder: what did I really learn? Am I smarter than I used to be?
I started to wonder, and this is what happened. 140 characters per book, for 174 books… 174 things you may not know.
40 Pages a day… It seems so daunting. It is something I would love to do though.
I wonder how it would work on kindle, how long does it usually take you to go through 40 pages?
Do you ever worry that setting that goal might make it a “have to do” and thus removing part of the enjoyment?
It doesn’t have to be 40 pages per day. You can also read shorter books.
On Kindle I don’t know, I don’t usually count the pages but the percentage.
Really though, 40 pages isn’t that daunting. You just have to use the computer and mobile devices less and take advantage of off-time or when you’re outside.
Now the question you pose on enjoyment is interesting. Yes, the goal has already become a “have to do”. Let me look at it another way: do achievements remove part of the enjoyment in games? It’s a motivation to keep me moving forward, a promise I’ve made to my past self that I want to keep, and fulfilling the promise feels good. In any case, I have to say that when I manage to push through a book I wasn’t enjoying, I feel accomplished to have kept going and not given up. None of the enjoyment is really lost. If it doesn’t come from the actual act of reading, it feels good doing something I’d pledged to do and clearing out another tiny part of my to-read list.
It feels good to not give in to the ease of distraction, as I’ve written many times before. Still, no matter how good it feels to not give in, the addiction is strong. That’s why it’s an addiction. But now I’m going down paths I’ve gone down many times before in my more recent posts.
All that said, remember that the selection of books is also important: I choose books I’m eager to read, not books I must read due to cultural imperatives or whatever. That makes it a whole lot easier. Although I do slip in books I’ve been putting off when I’m on a roll and I feel like reading more than usual. If you can’t motivate yourself to read the books you actually want to read, what would you read?