Whimsies of a Nerd Girl

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Setting Book Goals for the New Year | 2019 New Year Resolutions

Hello my nerdy friends!

As the old year is winding down I thought I’d go over some ideas for what kind of book goals we should be setting for the new year. I’ve noticed a lot of problems in the past with people scrolling through social media and they either judge what another person’s goals are or they feel inadequate for not setting the same “standards” for theirselves. I’m here to tell you that those people hold no authority in your own personal life. Let them do what they want and #youdoyou girlfriend.

New year resolutions don’t have to be a huge daunting thing hanging over us, it only feels that way because we set way too many goals at once as well as them not being realistic. Most of the time this is the case and I can say this due to my past experiences so I wanted to give you a good idea of what you should do to set up effective goals that I’m sure you’re going to rock in 2019!

GET SPECIFIC

Figure out just exactly what you want to achieve in the new year. Do you want to read more or a set amount of books/pages/words by the end of the year? Do you want to start saving money on all the books you’ve been spending way too much money on? Or maybe, you simply just want to do something like the “Read Harder” challenge by reading more diverse books than you’re usual reads. Think over this for awhile so you know what you’re dedicating your time to - which leads me to the next topic.

TIME MANAGEMENT + STEPS TO TAKE

When you set your goals make sure you think of the time and commitment you’re making for each one of those. Do you have enough time during the week to do what you have in mind? Be sure to schedule in the time for your automatic non-negotiable tasks (such as work, cleaning, meals, daily routines, etc.). After that make sure you set a very detailed goal for what you want to accomplish, say read for an hour a day. Then after you make that goal list the ways you’re going to achieve them. For instance, being sure all your other necessary to dos are done for the day before you read and setting a date/time with an alarm on your phone to notify you when you should be chilling with a book which brings me to the last important step.

SCHEDULE + PLAN AHEAD

Like I said with my previous example, if you don’t mark some reading time in your planner you’re never going to get any reading done. Instead you’re going to sit there and scroll through your social media (hey, I see you - it’s a WIP for myself as well so don’t feel bad).

Going in with a strategy is going to make it more likely that you put your goals into action. Just be sure to figure out what kind of planner you want to use and keep your own habits in mind. I love the idea of paper planners, but I use those usually more for the bigger picture goals for example like reading 20 hours in a month or something along those lines. For the individual reading tasks I’m going to probably schedule those in a digital planner app because 1) I almost always have my smartphone nearby and 2) paper planners don’t alert me like a phone calendar schedule can. Take this into consideration when planning ahead!

After that your reading goals should be pretty simple as long as you implement your new rules and guidelines - then everything should go according to plan! :)

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