When discussing New Year Resolutions, an associate mentioned he wanted to read a-chapter-a-day.
His strategy, he explained, was that he had both a “serious book” and a child’s book ready so that on the nights he couldn’t complete a “serious” chapter… he could read from the child’s book instead.
Having attempted and failed this resolution in the past myself (minus the child’s book part), I offered him an alternative strategy.
Rather than making a-chapter-a-day the goal… I suggested he make reading a-page-a-day the goal. This way he could eliminate the children’s book altogether (unless he really wanted to make that his focus read) and read exclusively from the book(s) he most wanted to read from.
The thing about a-chapter-a-day is that chapters are definitely not created equal. And there will be days (most days, in fact) when your appetite for reading and the length of the chapter will be completely mismatched. You’ll find yourself reading short chapters on days when you’re feeling most motivated and staring gravely at the number of pages you still have to go on the days when you’re feeling the least.
The thing about a-page-a-day is that it fixes that. The challenge is equal each day and the strategy is optimized for the days when you’re feeling least motivated—precisely when you’re most likely to fall off the wagon. And if it’s true that we can read even one page on our worst days… then nothing is stopping us from reading every day.
…And what’ll probably end up happening is you’ll read the amount equal to your appetite each day anyway.
Exactly how it should be.