Setting Goals

Reading 200 Books a Year

You Can Read or You Can Write About Reading

What can we learn when we set larger than life goals for ourselves?

I’m in my fourth full year of setting this goal for myself. The goal is to read 200 books each year. I began setting that goal when I woke up one day and realized a couple of things.

1. I was terribly out of date with the decades’ current thought leaders.
2. I had always been a voracious reader, but had stopped reading.
3. I had lost my raison d’ê·tre. And I can no longer eat Raisin Bran.

Why do these things happen to us? When do they happen? Is this something that anyone can expect to happen, at any point in life?

How can we think about our lives in a way that keeps us interested and interesting? How can we avoid pitfalls like these? Is it even possible to avoid pitfalls, and why would we want to? Do we benefit when we are “in the pits?”

Curiously, the answers are all in the questions. Maintaining our sense of curiosity is likely the best cure we have to keeping our sanity.

Children don’t have to be told, “stay curious.” In the same way a flower knows how to bloom, so a child knows to ask “why.” When did we lose that curiosity? When did YOU lose yours? What’s your story? We all have one.

I had stopped reading for two reasons. My IBM career was a time and soul sucking adventure. I was happy with the adventure as long as it continued. When it was over, I was a bit like Alice after coming home from her travels. Sitting on the lawn — what comes next? No one ever talks about that part of the story.

The other reason I stopped reading — aging eyes. Audio books changed all that for me. Thank goodness I have a persistent son continually encouraging me to change my habits.

In 2021, I read 92 books, not including college texts. That’s a far cry from my goal of 200. In 2020, I came much closer to the goal. My college studies consumed much of my time last year, so I attribute my shorter reading list to that time swizzle.

I have a choice. I can focus on this fact that I missed my goal. Or I can focus on the fact that I was able to digest the thinking of over 90 authors last year, allowing me to expand my worldview.

Setting this larger than life goal is just the beginning of something great. I like to say “set it and forget it.” It’s not about achieving the goal exactly. It’s about what happens after you set that goal. Like any good sportsperson — keeping your eye on it pulls you forward into what comes next. Staying curious keeps your brain growing and rewiring. We cannot totally know what comes next. We need only stay curious to watch it emerge and unfold, like the flower bud opening. Staying mindful, curiously waiting and watching while still doing the work is the secret to finding the greatness within.

I have a friend, Carla B. in Columbia, who reminds me of something we heard in a workshop, while colleagues in the Inner MBA program which we were fortunate enough to attend together in Cohort 1.

Ask a question so large that only your life can answer it.

— Rose Marcario, former CEO of Patagonia

Setting excessively large goals is like that. Set those impossible goals. Then watch what emerges in your life.

Ultimately, we have only so many hours in the day. Our time is always precious. How we honor our lives, with how we spend this gift of time within our lives, matters.

I love reading as much as I love writing. Finding the balance is challenging for me. I am an all-in kind of gal. With everything I do.

In 2021, I maintained a 4.0 in a full time college load leading to a degree in Psychology and Global Indigenous Knowledge Systems. I taught Haiku poetry writing in my favorite garden space, Innisfree, and was featured on a syndicated podcast, Growing Greener, speaking about that experience. I walked 588,324 steps and meditated 11,562 minutes last year. And I read 92 books. I edited publications on Medium and met weekly with an amazing team of associate editors. I managed an Airbnb to pay my bills. I led a group of women into a brave new future at the Garden of Neuro.

I found precious little time to write. I am setting new goals for 2022 that include all of the things I love doing, hopefully more balanced, including more time for my writing. If you spend all your time reading, it’s hard to find the time to write about what you are reading. Especially at the pace I maintain. Do marathon runners stop and smell the roses along the way?

Here is the list of books I read in 2021. I hope you’ll pick up a few of them too. I’ve bolded the ones I think are super important for everyone to read.

And if you are a woman reading this, I’d like to invite you to a new women’s reading group I started in 2021. We’re doing some deep dives into four essential books this year: Sapiens, Sand Talk, Braiding Sweetgrass, and Flying Lead Change.

1. Four Hundred Souls: Essays by Ibram X. Kendi
2. Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser
3. Neurotribes by Steve Silberman
4. Untamed by Glennon Doyle
5. Becoming by Michelle Obama
6. A Promised Land by Barack Obama
7. The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
8. I Thought it was Me But it Wasn’t by Brene Brown
9. Zikora by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
10. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
11. The Prosperous Coach by Chandler & Litvin
12. The Power of Receiving by Amanda Owen
13. Flying Lead Change by Kelly Wendorf
14. Yo Yo Ma’s Beginner’s Mind by Yo Yo Ma
15. Mother Culture by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
16. Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn McEntyre
17. The Gift by Dr. Edith Eger
18. The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz
19. The Terrible by Daley-Ward
20. Attached by Amir Levine
21. Tribe of Millionaires by David Osborne
22. Breath by James Nestor
23. The Country We Love by Diane Guerrero
24. American Nations by Colin Woodard
25. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
26. How to Argue with a Racist by Adam Rutherford
27. Hobo Fabulous by Craig Ferguson
28. The Essential Neruda by Pablo Neruda
29. Five Wishes by Gay Hendricks
30. The Power by Naomi Alderman
31. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
32. Later by Stephen King
33. Bluefishing by Steve Sims
34. An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
35. Poetic Forecast by Zan Johns
36. Genocide of the Mind by Mari Jo Moore
37. Adaptive Action by Glenda Eoyang and Royce Holladay
38. Simple Rules: A Radical Inquiry into Self by Mallary Tytel and Royce Holladay
39. Indistractable by Nir Eyal
40. Cultural Psychology by Steven Heine
41. Hooked by Nir Eyal
42. A Curious History of Sex by Kate Lister
43. City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
44. Proximity Principle by Ken Coleman
45. If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kanuamura
46. The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
47. Being Heumann by Judith Heumann
48. The Glass Castle by Abbey Beathan
49. Traveling While Black by Nanjala Nyabola
50. Death in Brittany by Jean-Luc Bannalec
51. Mother Nature by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
52. Compassionate Conversations by Diane Musho Hamilton
53. Daring to Trust by David Richo
54. Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault
55. Vagus Nerve and Overthinking by Gregory Cooper
56. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
57. Quit Like a Woman by Holly Whitaker
58. Sula by Toni Morrison
59. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
60. Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
61. Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford
62. Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks
63. Maps of Narrative Practice by Michael White
64. Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
65. Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho
66. The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
67. Still Foolin’ Em by Billy Crystal
68. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
69. Range by David Epstein
70. Wordslut by Amanda Montell
71. Principles by Ray Dalio
72. Wolfpack by Abby Wambach
73. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
74. Powershift by Daymond John
75. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
76. Think Again by Adam Grant
77. The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
78. Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
79. The Last Days of John Lennon by James Patterson
80. Landslide by Michael Wolff
81. Nine Nasty Words by John McWhorter
82. Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
83. The Body’s Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
84. An Ugly Truth by Sheera Frenkel
85. The God Equation by Michio Kaku
86. Artificial Intelligence Basics by Tom Taulli
87. Mine! by Michael Heller and James Salzman
88. Rationality by Steven Pinker
89. Media Psychology by Gail Stever et al.
90. The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos
91. Noise: A Flaw In Judgement by Daniel Kahneman
92. A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris

What books am I taking into 2022?

1. Native American Women’s Studies by Stephanie Sellers
2. Living Nations, Living Words by Joy Harjo
3. A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the New American South edited by Cinelle Barnes
4. A reread of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
5. Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts edited by George J. Sefa et al.
6. Inside Comedy by David Steinberg
7. How to Write a Lot by Paul J. Silvia
8. A Good Cry by Nikki Giovanni

If you are a woman curious about what’s next in your life, already in transition, or have gone through so many experiences you are ready to step into your wisdom for the benefit of other women, we want to invite you to the Garden of Neuro. Visit us at gardenofneuro.com and follow the links.

More posts about my 200 book a year journey —

Susan B. is an entrepreneur, writer, editor, poet and ship captain. Come find her in the Garden.