How to Read 80 Books in a Year, Refine Your Goals, and Embrace the Process
With 2017 complete and 2018 well under way, time is up on my reading race. I set out to read 100 books in a calendar year. Ultimately, I came up short, but I did finish the year having read 80 books.
Overall I am thrilled that I read so many books. I set such an extravagant goal so that I could feel proud even if I didn’t reach it.
That being said, I wanted to reflect on my quest and what prevented me from achieving my initial goal.
Monthly Totals
Reading 100 books in a year requires finishing over 8 books a month. Looking back at my monthly totals, I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t hit the target.
For the first half of the year I read 6 or 7 books per month. I reached 8 books only once, and more than 8 books three times. Although November and December are certainly outliers, I noticed an interesting correlation starting in July. That month, I shared my monthly reading totals to build outside pressure to attain my goal.
Once I started writing monthly updates in July, I began hitting my monthly requirements through October. This graph gave me insights into what worked and what didn’t:
Pillars of Success
External pressure: At the beginning of the year, I told friends and family about my ambitious reading goal. Throughout the year most conversations I had seemed to gravitate towards my reading progress. These constant reminders kept me focused and pushing. I highly recommend doing this if you’re looking to accomplish something on a deadline. If not this approach, you can use websites like stickK or Beeminder to create external pressures online. (For example, make sure to finish that novel you’ve been working on so you avoid automatically donating to a horrible non-profit!)
Apps/phone hacks: Using tools like Bookout helped me improve my reading pace dramatically. The app times your reading, providing analytics of pages per minute and daily/monthly progress. Another tremendous aid was the grayscale feature on my iPhone. I tested it for a week and, to my surprise, have been grayscale for almost a year. Spending less time on my phone and more time reading was a major contributor to the cause. If you’re interested in trying this: Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations > Color Filters.
Audiobooks: Audiobooks are the most portable way to consume your books. I turned my commute into book-listening time, increasing my reading pace tremendously. On apps like Audible and Overdrive, I listened to audiobooks at 1.5 times speed, allowing me to listen to a book as fast as I could read it on the page.
Points of Improvement
Take more notes: Reading a lot of material comes at a price. I retained most of the major ideas from the books I read, taking some notes along the way. However, I have forgotten details that I would remember had I written them down. Fiction does not require note-taking quite like non-fiction does, but novels like The Prophet, which reads more like philosophy, prompted frequent scribbling.
Fewer books, more pages: My intent for reading more books was to glean more ideas. In the end, this prevented me from choosing 500+-page books, many of which are indispensable classics. This year I plan on focusing less on reading many shorter books, and more on reading essential literature, no matter the length. (Also, I think I might make faster progress now that I’m reading more on my Kindle.)
Reflection
My greatest realization last year was the importance of the process, not the goal. I wanted to read 100 books, but more importantly I craved new ideas. This year I became a better learner, taking in more ideas than in any year of my life.
The goal — the mystical number 100 — was merely an end, and learning was the means to that end. My friend Luke and I are starting an accountability group, and we discussed the importance of embracing the process as the most important part of achieving our goals in 2018.
Below are the 80 books I read this year. Each is linked to Amazon and local bookstores by title and author respectively, and favorites are marked with a hot pepper:
“Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.”
2. The Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle
“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time — past and future — the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.”
3. Siddhartha — Herman Hesse 🌶
“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
4. Daring Greatly — Brene Brown
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
5. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up — Marie Kondo
“The best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hand and ask: “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it. This is not only the simplest but also the most accurate yardstick by which to judge.”
6. Peace Is Every Step — Thich Nhat Hanh
“When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight.”
7. Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
8. The E-Myth Revisited — Michael E. Gerber
“Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.”
9. Modern Romance — Aziz Ansari
“We want something that’s very passionate, or boiling, from the get-go. In the past, people weren’t looking for something boiling; they just needed some water. Once they found it and committed to a life together, they did their best to heat things up. Now, if things aren’t boiling, committing to marriage seems premature.”
10. The Miracle of Mindfulness — Thich Nhat Hanh
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”
11. The Mastery of Self — Don Miguel Ruiz
“For a Master of Self, peace comes with forgiveness, by letting go of any poison you’re holding on to. If you let that poison drown you, then you become part of the cycle that has brought suffering into this world.”
12. Steal Like an Artist — Austin Kleon 🌶
“The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love.”
13. The Strange Library — Haruki Murakami
“The world follows its own course. Each possesses his thoughts, each treads his own path. So it is with your mother, and so it is with your starling. The world follows its own course.”
14. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — F. Scott Fitzgerald
“A rigour passed over him, blood rose into his cheeks, his forehead, and there was a steady thumping in his ears. It was first love.”
15. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win — Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
“Our freedom to operate and maneuver had increased substantially through disciplined procedures. Discipline equals freedom.”
16. The Doors of Perception — Aldous Huxley
“To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.”
17. Into the War — Italo Calvino
“For the conquering man every land is enemy territory, even his own.”
18. Man’s Search for Meaning — Viktor E. Frankl 🌶
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
19. Musicophilia — Oliver Sacks 🌶
“The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain…Music expresses only the quintessence of life and of its events, never these themselves.”
20. A Man Called Ove — Fredrik Backman
“We always think there’s enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like ‘if’.”
21. How to Win Friends & Influence People — Dale Carnegie
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
22. Yes Please — Amy Poehler
“I think we should stop asking people in their twenties what they “want to do” and start asking them what they don’t want to do.”
23. How to Ruin Everything — George Watsky
“Don’t fall asleep yet. Contrary to popular belief, that’s not where dreams get accomplished.”
24. Me Talk Pretty One Day — David Sedaris
“If cooking is an art, we’re in our Dada phase.”
25. On Tyranny — Timothy Snyder 🌶
“Post-truth is pre-fascism.”
26. Keep Moving — Dick Van Dyke
“You don’t have to act your age. You don’t even have to feel it. And if it does attempt to elbow its way into your life, you do not have to pay attention. If I am out shopping and hear music playing in a store, I start to dance. If I want to sing, I sing. When people ask my secret to staying youthful at an age when getting up and down from your chair on your own is considered an accomplishment, you know what I tell them? ‘Keep moving.’”
27. Unlimited Power — Tony Robbins
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children: to earn the appreciate of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
28. The View from the Cheap Seats — Neil Gaiman
“Go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.” (see full ‘Make Good Art’ commencement speech)
29. Unshakeable — Tony Robbins
“The best opportunities come in times of maximum pessimism.”
30. When Things Fall Apart — Pema Chödrön
“The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.”
31. The Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck — Mark Manson
“Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contract, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable.”
32. The Graveyard Book — Neil Gaiman 🌶
“Kiss a lover, Dance a measure, Find your name and buried treasure…Face your life, Its pain, Its pleasure, Leave no path untaken.”
33. I Will Teach You to Be Rich — Ramit Sethi
“Getting started is more important than becoming an expert.”
34. Growth Hacker Marketing — Ryan Holiday
“A growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Their tools are e-mails, pay-per-click ads, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money.”
35. The Nature of the Chinese Character — Barbara Aria
“The character for ‘lake,’ or “a sheet of water,” is something of a riddle. Comprising three elements, its meaning is determined by the radical, three interrelated strokes suggesting drops of liquid. Combined with this are the characters for ‘moon,’ and ‘old,’ or ‘long life.’ Only in lakes does water rest. Bounded by land on all sides, it lies perfectly still, reflective. Unlike flowing water, which is eternally young, the water of the lake does not flow infinitely through space. It is old water. And in the long-lived waters of the lake, shines the moon.”
36. I Am Malala — Malala Yousafzai
“Let us pick up our books and our pens…They are the most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.”
37. The Book of Joy — The Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, & Douglas Abrams 🌶
“There’s a Tibetan saying: ‘Wherever you have friends that’s your country, and wherever you receive love, that’s your home.’”
38. Hillbilly Elegy — J.D. Vance
“Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren’t. He wears suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we’re lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn’t be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it — not because we think she’s wrong but because we know she’s right.”
39. Trust Me, I’m Lying — Ryan Holiday
“You cannot have your news instantly and have it done well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have you news for free; you can only obscure the costs. If as a culture we can learn this lesson, and if we can learn to love the hard work, we will save ourselves much trouble and collateral damage. We must remember: There is no easy way.”
40. 200 Great Destinations: Art, History, Nature — Marco Cattaneo
“Today we find ourselves onlookers — sometimes bewildered and often disinterested — of a world that is silencing cultural diversities through rapid globalization…This is precisely where UNESCO comes in, to protect and safeguard the equal dignity of all cultures and ‘their vocation to enrich themselves and permeate each other.’”
41. Mindless Eating — Brian Wansink
“The basic rule: distractions of all kinds make us eat, forget how much we eat, and extend how long we eat — even when we’re not hungry.”
“Twin Peaks was my religion. Well, Twin Peaks and Christianity. But at present, Twin Peaks was winning. I loved God, but at the moment I was more obsessed with Bob and Dale Cooper and Audrey Horne.”
43. Night Sky with Exit Wounds — Ocean Vuong
“& remember,/loneliness is still time spent/with the world.”
44. Think and Grow Rich — Napoleon Hill
“The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.”
45. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft — Stephen King
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
46. The Joyous Cosmology — Alan Watts 🌶
“We say, ‘I came into this world.’ But we did nothing of the kind. We came out of it in just the way that fruit comes out of trees.”
47. The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King — Rich Cohen
“When Zemurray finished, Wing smiled and said, ‘ Unfortunately, Mr. Zemurray, I can’t understand a word of what you say.’ The men at the table started to laugh. Zemurray’s pupils narrowed to pinpricks, his hands turned into fists. He muttered, then stormed out. Perhaps the board members believed Zemurray had been chased away, was fleeing back to New Orleans. In truth, he had only gone to retrieve his bag of proxies. Returning to the boardroom, he slapped them on the table and said, ‘You’re fired! Can you understand that, Mr. Chairman?’”
48. The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge — Jeremy Narby
“How could nature not be conscious if our own consciousness is produced by nature?”
49. The Reluctant Fundamentalist — Mohsin Hamid
“As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away.”
50. Daily Rituals — Mason Currey
“A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.”
51. What Every BODY Is Saying — Joe Navarro 🌶
“The problem is that most people spend their lives looking but not truly seeing, or, as Sherlock Holmes, the meticulous English detective, declared to his partner, Dr. Watson, ‘You see, but you do not observe.’”
52. Purple Cow — Seth Godin
“In your career, even more than for a brand, being safe is risky. The path to lifetime job security is to be remarkable.”
53. Show Your Work! — Austin Kleon
“Forget about being an expert or a professional, and wear your amateurism (your heart, your love) on your sleeve. Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you.”
54. Milk and Honey — Rupi Kaur 🌶
“Fall in love with your solitude.”
55. Ready Player One — Ernest Cline
“No one in the world gets what they want and that is beautiful.”
56. The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz
“Take care of the people, the products, and the profits — in that order.”
57. A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess 🌶
“Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”
“‘Optimism,’ said Cacambo, ‘What is that?’ ‘Alas!’ replied Candide, “It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
59. Metamorphosis — Franz Kafka
“Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”
60. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley 🌶
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
61. Before the Fall — Noah Hawley
“It’s hard to be sad when you’re being useful.”
62. The Richest Man in Babylon — George S. Clason
“Our acts can be no wiser than our thoughts.”
63. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running — Haruki Murakami
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
64. The Prince — Niccolo Machiavelli
“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.”
65. The Alchemist — Paulo Coelho
“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
66. Vagabonding — Rolf Potts
“The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home.”
67. Scrum — Jeff Sutherland
“Multitasking Makes You Stupid. Doing more than one thing at a time makes you slower and worse at both tasks. Don’t do it. If you think this doesn’t apply to you, you’re wrong — it does.”
68. The Glass Menagerie — Tennessee Williams 🌶
“Time is the longest distance between two places.”
69. Be Here Now — Ram Dass
“I can do nothing for you but work on myself…you can do nothing for me but work on yourself!”
70. Born a Crime — Trevor Noah 🌶
“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.”
71. The End of the Affair — Graham Greene
“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
72. The Bridge of San Luis Rey — Thornton Wilder
“The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.”
73. The Art of Possibility — Benjamin and Rosamund Stone Zander
“In the measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the world of possibility, you set a context and let life unfold.”
74. Cat’s Cradle — Kurt Vonnegut
“Science is magic that works.”
75. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry — Neil deGrasse Tyson
“The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”
76. You Are a Badass — Jen Sincero
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
77. The Prophet — Kahlil Gibran 🌶
“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
78. Song of Solomon — Toni Morrison
“You wanna fly, you gotta give up the shit that weighs you down.”
79. Enchiridion — Epictetus
“People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.”
80. The War of Art — Steven Pressfield 🌶
“If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”
. . .
Thank you to everyone who inspired me through the process with ideas, wisdom, and newfound inspiration to read more. Whether you’re an artist or an accountant, an entrepreneur or an employee, I hope these lessons help you find goals you hope to achieve, whether they’re related to reading or not.
I have toyed with the idea of having a monthly update with new book recommendations and interesting ideas I’m experimenting with. If you’re interested, fill out the form linked here.
My last bit of advice, which I have included in each of these updates, is this: If you read one book a month, you will learn at least twelve new ideas a year. If you finish a book a week, you can read over 50 books a year.
