Like pretty much everyone else on booktok, I decided to start 75 booked this month. It was created originally by emilypaigebooks on Tiktok. As you may have guessed, it’s a spin on the 75 hard or 75 soft fitness challenges that go around every once in a while. I’ve usually had a pretty hard stance against those challenges for a lot of reasons, primarily because I think you should always strive for progress over perfection. Any challenge that you have to start over when you “fail” doesn’t actually set you up for developing habits or living a “healthier” life in the long run. You get frustrated and quit and never make any progress on your goals. This is mostly the case for those challenges about working out, fitness, and/or dieting.
However, 75 booked caught my attention because I REALLY need to get going and finish my reading challenge. I started it right before a work trip where I literally did not actually have a spare moment to read (I promise, I truly did not) so I decided to actually start it when I got home and could settle in for the next 75 days. I also reduced some of the goals (two 45 minute sessions felt daunting to me and I decided to go down to 30 minutes to ensure I’d actually do it… progress, not perfection!).
I (re)started this challenge on November 20th because I thought it was a semi-clean day/number within the week. I will be done at the very beginning of February. Here are my rules:
Read 30 minutes
This is for one thirty-minute reading session. There aren’t any rules or regulations on this one as long as I’m reading for 30 minutes. The original challenge has this same basic one except they do 45 minutes.
Read 30 minutes – not in bed
This is for one thirty-minute reading session but this time I can’t read in bed. The goal is to either read somewhere else in the house, in a coffee shop, etc. instead of just lounging in bed. Again, the usual challenge is 45 minutes but I’ve reduced it. There is a secret goal in my head to make one of my sessions 45 minutes but I decided not to track that here.
Book buying ban
I can’t buy any books during this 75 days with my own money. Therefore there are some general caveats, like when I get a gift card for Christmas or can acquire a book for free in some way (ex: just downloaded the Lisa Unger holiday novella as an Amazon First Read for $0). I’ve also cut myself slack for books I already preordered before beginning the challenge; I think there’s just one coming on 12/30. I’m not going to cancel that one. I will also not cancel my book boxes that I subscribe to. I can obviously skip if the books don’t interest me but I’m getting charged these months regardless, so it kinda counts.
Track reading sessions
I tried to use Bookly a few years ago but I’m a stop-and-go distracted reader. I love reading during sports games and looking up when the play is happening, then looking back down to read in between or during commercials. I can’t super accurately track reading times when this happens. I did decide to use Bookly during these 75 days in order to keep my hours/minutes perfectly accounted for. I try to pause the timer when I stop reading and just restart it when I’m ready again. For this one, I also need to track my updates on Storygraph like usual.
Drink two “glasses” of water per day
Most people will drink a water bottle per reading session but sometimes I have a different beverage while reading. My goal is to generally have a couple of glasses of water per day since I’m terrible about drinking water. This also – in my head – equates to drinking my entire tumbler of water that I carry around the house each day.
Purpose and Goal
I wanted to finish the year strong since I’ve been behind on my reading challenge for a while. The timing of starting this in November and ending in early February means that I will be “forced” to end the year strong (aka meet my Goodreads goal) and also start the year strong. I wanted to start at the beginning of November so it would be a little cleaner but this is still a good way to keep my reading momentum going through the new year. It’s absolutely not HARD to read for 60 minutes a day but this year has had many days where I didn’t pick up a book at all, which is not okay in my world.
Nice post , thank you for sharing.