I Didn’t Set Reading Goals in 2023. Do I Regret It? | End of Year Reflection

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And just like that, 2023 has come and gone. Welcome, dear reader, to the second half of my 2023 reflections post. In part one, I reflected on the books I read and how my blogging and writing year went. In this second part, I want to talk about why I didn’t set any reading goals for 2023, if I regret that and what I’m looking to get out of my reading in 2024.

Looking Back on my Reading, Blogging, Writing and Personal Life in 2023 | End of Year Reflection

Why I Didn’t Set Any Reading Goals In 2023

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you will have seen me set reading goals and repeatedly fail them. I wrote about that in a post last year, if you are curious to hear about my experience with publicly failing reading goals.

So after consecutive years of not managing to hit these reading goals I set for myself, I decided that 2023 would be the year where I freed myself from any such ambitions. I didn’t set reading goals for 2023. Happily, I hopped over to goodreads and put my reading goal for the year at 1 book. And that was that! No reading goals, no challenges, no guardrails to shape my reading this year. I was free!

Do I Regret Not Setting Reading Goals?

My answer to this question is both yes and no.

In 2023, I read the least amount of books since starting this blog. My reading felt slow and disjointed and honestly, there were very few standout books for me this year. In some ways, it was a terrible reading year!

If we are to assume that the quality of my reading year is somehow correlated to my lack of reading goals to guide me, then yeah, I regret it! I also regret not setting reading goals because while I enjoyed being free of any arbitrary expectations on my reading, I also didn’t have anything to motivate or inspire me to read consistently or expand my reading tastes. Both of which are aspects that matter to me!

So with the freedom of not having reading goals came the chaos of not having anything to aim for. And as a mood reader, that kind of meant my reading dissolved into chaos. I couldn’t decide what to read, started a billion books and never finished them, picked up books I didn’t actually want to read much just because they were mindless snack food stories that didn’t require me to engage with them.

While there are definitely other reasons for my lack of reading this year, I do think that not having reading goals contributed to the strange reading year I had in 2023.

But no, I don’t regret not setting reading goals. I think having a year free from those expectations and ambitions was actually very good for my reading overall! While 2023 might not have been a standout reading year, it did teach me about my reading habits and what I want out of my reading. So not setting any reading goals actually taught me a lot! Now, going into 2024, I have a better sense of how to approach reading goals and what kind of goals make reading fun for me. Ultimately, not setting reading goals in 2023 was incredibly helpful!

Am I Setting Reading Goals in 2024?

Yes, I will be back on my bullshit with too many too ambitious reading goals! But Lay, didn’t you just say you always fail at reading goals? Yes, astute reader, that’s right! But what my year of no goals allowed me to realise is that it’s not the reaching of the goals that matters to me! Turns out, reading goals and reading challenges are very much a “the journey is the goal” situation for me.

To me, reading goals are a north star to facilitate a more fun and intentional engagement with my reading. Whether or not I actually reach the goals is absolutely secondary to the enjoyment that I find in striving towards them. Your mileage may vary on this since we are all different readers, but I have realised that I like the framework of a challenge but am not actually very attached to winning it.

I will have a whole post about my ambitious reading goals in 2024, so keep your eyes out for that in the next days!

What I Want to Get Out of Reading in 2024

The simple answer is joy. I want to immerse myself in stories, splash around in them like a kid in a pool. I want to read big book and classics and graphic novels and books I pick up just because they sound weird and wonderful. I want to read in my comfort zone and strive beyond it. I want my reading to be joyful and healing, complex and demanding. I want stories to seep into every corner of my life. I want to fill my creative well because in 2024, I also want to write like never before!

My reading this year will be joyful and expansive, and I hope that my creative work will reflect that, too!

Let’s Chat!

So there you have it, that’s my two cents on why I didn’t set reading goals and what I learned from the experience. I’m excited to dive into a fresh reading year and am curious to see what stories I can discover and how they’ll inevitably change my life.

✨ Where do you fall on the “no reading goals” to “all the ambitious reading goals” spectrum?

✨ Have you experimented with how many or what kind of reading goals you set?

I hope you have a lovely day,

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