PLAYING IN THE PAGES: I Read 13 Books in December: What I Learned, and How I'm Tackling My Goodreads Challenge in 2020

November 30th, 2019, I was staring down the barrel of a December so jam-packed full of events and obligations, it seemed on the brink of collapse.

There was "Cookie Day," really a two-day period where my mom and I annually slam out up to 15 batches of cookies to prepare for the Christmas season. My brother, a senior in high school, had not one, but two holiday band concerts, each longer than two hours (one nearly eclipsed three). We have a gauntlet of family holiday celebrations, and even more when you factor in friends, as well as a lot of church time. To cap it all off, my parents, brother, and I would be leaving on vacation for the last four days of the year.

Most importantly... I still had 13 books left to read on my Goodreads Challenge. It would be my first year - since starting the challenge in 2013 - I wouldn't beat it!

In general, 2019 wasn't my year, at all, and this abysmal performance (in my view) only confirmed it. I've read as many as 77 books in a year before; my goal for 2019 was a good 16 below that number. I had deliberately chosen 60 with the expectation that I'd rise up to meet it, by choosing harder books, difficult subjects, a more wide-spanning, inspiring realm of authors. Instead, I didn't really read for two months out of the year, and now was facing down not only a rapidly diminishing calendar, but also had found myself in self-esteem quicksand. (You know, late night thoughts along the lines of, If I'm not a reader, who am I? That kind of not-so-healthy stuff.)

There was only one way out of this mess: I had to read all of those books before the new year rolled around. I had to beat the deadline. I had to win! However, this required a lot of commitment and choice. Was I really up for the challenge?

To be clear: I spent the entire month in a near panic, trying to juggle not only time calendar commitments and regular life events, but also terrified that at any point, I could sink back into a major slump that would take me out of commission entirely. The last thing I'd look at before bed every night, was the stack of books on my table. I even stopped recording what I was reading in my book journal, because I just wanted to get it input into Goodreads as quickly as possible. I was a woman possessed!

At the end of it all, I successfully read 13 books in 31 days... with the final three being completed in the last three days of a year, while confined to a log cabin on an island with zero cell service and a stack of books beside my bed, which, you know, helped. (The same vacation that saw me picking up nine more TBR books, like I talked about here! More on all that in a later post, though.)

Here are a few of the tricks I learned along the way:

on a time crunch? how to achieve a last-minute goal before a final deadline

Clarify your intentions: Why is it important to you? Why did you choose this goal to begin with? Are these still reasons that resonate with you?
Understand your limitations: Consider what aspects of this goal you might stumble with, and make proactive decisions based on those specific vulnerabilities.
Take things step-by-step: One day, one hour, one book, at a time! Do as much as you can with the time available to you right now, focusing all of your attention on the immediate steps in front of you. You'll have plenty of time to worry about what comes next later.
Get strict, or find people who are, and hold yourself accountable: Turn off your phone, charge your laptop on the other side of the room, send yourself to "time out" by setting timer blocks on your tech.
Make it a regular priority: Say "no" to the things you deem as less important... within reason. But when it comes to those things you opt into, make sure you're putting actions towards your goal first.
Reward yourself with progress: When you're on a crunch, there's no time to applaud the milestones. Focus on what benefits lay in actually making the progress on its own, and use it as fuel to drive you further towards the finish line!

Lovely words, you know? But when it comes to utilizing those tips to actually manage a Goodreads win, here's what it looked like:

"Clarifying my intentions" had a lot less to do with the statement "I need to win," than it did with admitting, "I don't need to do this. No one is forcing me. I want to prove it to myself that I can." External accountability is great if you can find it, but when it comes to personal accountability, you need to focus hard on the "why"s, and the emotional investment you feel.

In terms of "understanding my limitations" and "getting strict," it had a lot more to do with understanding what's bogged me down in the past. For the most part? Long, uninspiring books that prevent me from enjoying my reading time, feeling too loyal to a bad read, and distracting myself with social media and YouTube, for the most part. Instead, I started choosing books that were under 350 words and were in some of my favorite genres, including rereads - "power player" books like Romances, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, and Memoir - and took a lot more care to get away from my phone.

The most important three were, by far, "taking things step by step," "making it a priority," and "rewarding myself with progress." It's difficult, to make yourself happy simply with the fact you've made it another page, or twenty, or a hundred, knowing that you've still got another stack of books waiting for you as soon as you're done with this one. So I broke it into chunks, saying, "Today, I just need to finish 50 pages. 100 pages. Whatever it takes, that's my priority." I had already admitted to myself that it was okay if I didn't make my end goal; but by establishing that 50 page limit, I assured that no matter how small, I was still making progress. That made it all the more exciting when I did get to the end of a book, or read past my personal marker: it felt like I was going above and beyond.

So, those are my last minute models for success, should you need them in the moment. However, all of that is so 2019... we're now in 2020, and a new Challenge looms far off in the distance.

Here's what I'm doing to set myself up better in the new year, while also aligning with my other reading goals:

tips for reading challenge success in 2020

Be specific and intentional with your goal setting. Don't just arbitrarily pick a number because you think it looks good, or because it's what you've done in the past... what are you really trying to accomplish this year? If your intention is to become more "well read," but you set a challenge to read 100 books in 2020, are you really aiming to meet your goals, or just have an impressive challenge?
Celebrate your TBR for its status as a work-in-progress. Clean up your bookish spaces, and make room in your common areas for a stack or two of books you're genuinely excited to read. Consider "un-hauling" your shelves, to bring books you really love more into prominence. The more you see it on a daily basis, the more you remember its importance in your life.
Take things month-by-month. Yes, this is similar to my blind December dash's "step-by-step" advice, but by broadening out those goals over the course of the year, you make more healthy, incremental steps towards your challenge, rather than cramming it all into one go. Set a standard for a certain number of books a month, and delight in the process.
Keep your books available around the clock. Admittedly, I'm horrible at this: I'm number one most likely member of a party to get roped into shopping, waiting for a table at a restaurant, or arriving early to a meeting, and thinking, "Man, I should have brought my book!" Make it the last thing you put into, and the first thing you take out of, your bag; keep it close to your desk or your bedside table. You never know when you'll have time to read! This will come in handy as you...
... Find your small pockets of time. Sometimes, it's easy to think, "When can I do this? I'm so busy!" But once you start tracking where those minutes go, you'll find you have ample opportunities to fit in a quick read. Waiting for your brother after French horn practice? Got 30 minutes on the oven while waiting for your cupcakes to bake? If you've got your book with you, those are valuable minutes!
Celebrate your reading goals. Okay, okay, because sometimes celebrating just the progress can get kind of boring! When I was younger, I'd routinely pass my Goodreads Challenge somewhere around August, and immediately ring in the glory with a few new reads, and now that I'm an adult, I celebrate my bloggoversary every summer by doing the same. Go, team you! Sometimes, those little rewards are what keep you going.
Keep up with your Goodreads account! Obviously, you have to log in the titles you read to get them to appear on your Challenge board, so you've probably seen the handy ticker on your home page, telling you how many books you are behind or in front of your goal. At one time last year, I had fallen SEVEN books behind... keep up with the scoreboard you're given!