With every year that passes and a new one knocking on our doors, we tend to constantly try to figure out what we can do to improve ourselves. Whether that means reading more, losing weight, getting rid of unhealthy habits, or simply being better people, every new year finds us motivated to change something about us for the better.
Here at Basmo, our new year’s resolutions are reading-related. And we thought, what is the ultimate reading resolution? To read more, to read better? We all finally agreed that an amazing challenge for the year 2023 would be to read 100 books by the time the year is over.
How to read 100 books in 2023? Join us in this amazing challenge and learn with us how to read 100 books a year.
Can you read 100 books in a year?
Of course, the first thing we need to establish is whether this is a realistic goal. And according to some rather simple calculations, yes, it is more than possible to read 100 books in a year.
Granted, reading 100 books a year is going to be somewhat challenging. By his own admission, Bill Gates reads an average of 50 books per year and it is a well-known fact that he is quite an endorser for reading in general.
That being said though when you get the math all sorted out, it all comes down to reading an average of 2 books per week. With 52 weeks in a year, you can actually afford to read a little less than 2 books each week and you will still manage to reach your goal.
It won’t be exactly easy. It will be a challenge and you are going to need a pretty clear action plan. But it is possible and as long as you realize that and you have the motivation to achieve your goal, there is little that is going to be able to stop you.
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How to read 100 books in 2023?
As I mentioned, achieving this amazing goal is not going to go well unless you have a clear action plan. To make things easier for you, here is our step-by-step guide to managing to read 100 books a year.
1. Set your motivation straight
The very first thing you need to do when you embark on this journey is to simply have a little chat with yourself and understand why you want to do it. Try to understand what your reasoning is, and what you want to achieve beyond the actual fact of reading 100 books within a year.
Are you doing it to gain more knowledge? Do you want to read 100 books in 2023 in order to enjoy the benefits of reading to the maximum? The importance of actually knowing why you do something is quite a lot more relevant than you might imagine.
Of course, the “new year, new me” concept is a pretty strong motivator. We all want to become better in some areas of our lives every time we enter a new year, and we are full of hope in regard to all of our goals. A little less-known fact is that most people give up on their new year’s resolutions within the first couple of months. As a matter of fact, research has shown that 64% of people generally abandon their resolutions within just a month.
If you want to avoid being one of those who quickly give up on their resolutions, you can benefit from reading our article dedicated to staying motivated to read.
2. Be realistic with your goals
If you want to read 100 books in a year, the main thing you will need to understand right off the bat is that this is a marathon and not a sprint. Setting unrealistic goals for your reading performance is not going to do you any good. You shouldn’t put too much pressure on yourself, especially in the first part of the year, because that can actually backfire and discourage you from actually going through with the challenge.
Set some realistic milestones, start slow (but not too slow), and make sure you perfectly understand that you are in this for the long run. If you set a goal to read 100 books in a year, you should stick to that instead of pushing yourself beyond your limits in the first month by trying to read 20 books.
A reading tracking app like Basmo can help you quite a lot.
When it comes to goals, Basmo allows you to set two different types: a daily goal for the number of minutes you spend reading every day and a big-picture goal for the number of books you read within a year.
The app will keep track of your progress toward meeting your reading expectations and will display it in a comprehensive and helpful manner.
Since you already know what your goal for the year is, you will just need to figure out what your daily goal should be. Don’t worry, we will help you with that below as well.
3. Schedule
Being organized is extremely important if you want to manage to read 100 books in a year. One way to do that is to create a clear schedule for your reading.
With Basmo, that is very easy to do because the app comes with a built-in reading scheduler.
You can customize it however you see fit, as it allows you to select the days of the week when you want to do your reading and even different times of day for each one.
That way you can easily work around your daily routine to find the right time for your reading sessions.
4. Remove distractions
With an average of more than three hours spent using the smartphone every day, it’s quite easy to see how much time we waste every day. Distractions are all around us and all they do is keep us from reaching our maximum potential.
If you really want to be one of the very few people who actually manage to read 100 books per year, removing distractions is a must. That doesn’t necessarily mean throwing your TV away or giving up on being on social media altogether. Extreme measures rarely work.
Instead, be mindful of how you spend your time every day and start reducing the amount of time you waste. Instead of scrolling on your phone during your breaks at work, read something. Instead of watching the news on TV for an hour, read them online and spend the rest of your time with a book in your hand.
5. Reading lists
As you probably already know, a lot of time is generally wasted by the average reader looking for their next book. In order to be able to actually read 100 books in a year, you need to figure out ways to be time-effective. That means wasting no time between books.
To be able to do that, you should always have a reading list. An updated, well-organized TBR list can save you a lot of trouble and a lot of time.
With Basmo, creating and keeping your reading lists updated is quick, easy, and extremely facile.
The app already comes with a couple of predefined lists you can start populating right away and that get automatically updated as you go through the titles. But you can also create as many reading lists as you find necessary if you want to separate the books by genre or other characteristics.
It is entirely up to you to figure out the perfect way to organize your reading lists and Basmo doesn’t only give you the tools to get that done, it also gives you complete freedom.
6. Read books you like
Another important thing to remember is that you will need to figure out a way to make this challenge fun. In order to pull it off and actually enjoy the benefits of reading 100 books a year, you will need to make things easy and pleasurable.
Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to read difficult books or things that you think you’re supposed to read. Considering how challenging it is to read 100 books per year nowadays with the hectic lifestyle we all have and with all the distractions around us, reading any 100 books would be a great achievement. That being said, don’t listen to what anyone thinks you should read. Read books that bring you joy, books that spark an interest, and make sure you enjoy every minute of reading you do throughout the year.
This will significantly improve your chances of actually achieving your goal. We tend to do a lot more of what we love.
Is reading 100 books a year a lot?
As I mentioned, getting through 100 books in a year is going to be a challenge. There’s no reason for me to sugarcoat things for you and tell you that you’re not going to struggle at least a little bit. What’s important is that it can definitely be done and with a little preparation, some good motivation, and a clear action plan, you can do it too.
Let’s look at the math for a bit to try and figure out how difficult it actually is to read 100 books in a year. Most books have between 200 and 400 pages. For the sake of this calculation, let’s take an average of 300 pages per book for your challenge. This means you will need to go through 30000 pages within a year.
The average reader can comfortably go through 40 pages in an hour. With this average speed, you would need 750 hours of reading throughout a year to be able to read 100 books. We all know that a year has 365 days, so the simple conclusion would be that just a little over 2 hours of reading every day would be enough for you to achieve your goal.
Now that doesn’t seem so bad, does it? If you look at your current schedule and daily routine, you will surely notice that a lot more than 2 hours get wasted on social media, playing games on your smartphone, or watching TV.
Using a reading tracking app can help make things even easier for you. Basmo tracks a lot of important information about your reading habits.
For example, it times every reading session you have, so it becomes very easy for you to see how many pages you manage to go through within a specific timeframe.
Basmo also calculates your reading speed according to that, and that will give you a clear idea of how close you are to the average reader. Knowing that will be the first step you need to take in order to improve.
If you use Basmo and start working on improving your reading speed, you will soon be able to go through a lot more pages in your reading sessions, which will make it a lot easier for you to be able to read 100 books in 2023.
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Final thoughts
So, is it possible to read 100 books in a year? Absolutely. Learning how to read 100 books in 2023 is going to significantly improve your general knowledge and you will be able to enjoy a wide series of benefits. Use Basmo to make this challenge easier and you will see for yourself what an amazing reader you can become.
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