Stop Reading 100 Books a Year

Or even one book a week.

We’ve all seen those articles and Youtube videos by smart, rich people. They tell you how they “Read 100 Books a Year and You Can Too” or “Reading a Book a Week Changed My Life.”

I’m here with some good news. You don’t have to do this.

In fact, please stop.

I consider myself primarily a novelist. I need people to read a lot of books to make money. It’s not in my interest to tell you to read less.

But it’s in your interest to get this practice out of your head.

Here’s why.

Stress

I read a book a week for at least five years in a row. One of those years I came close to 100 in the year.

When you set a goal like this, it adds unnecessary stress to your life. Do you really believe reading 100 books a year will magically make you a billionaire?

I had places to go, work to do, exercise to accomplish, hobbies to complete. And during every one of those activities, there was that nagging sensation at the back of my head.

You’re not going to finish that book this week. Then you’ll be behind.

The cycle only gets worse from there.

If you already plow through 200 books a year naturally, that’s great! Don’t stop doing this.

If you set a goal to read a book a week, and it’s not something you already do, don’t do it.

I’m a huge goal setter (see my Bullet Journal for Intentionality article for more information). Goals should be specific and achievable. Normally, setting a number like that would be ideal.

But I’m telling you this will defeat the purpose. I think a much better goal is the vague one: read more. The craziest and most popular article on this topic claims that anyone can read 200 books a year. It’s easy, don’t you know! Just look at the numbers.

I’m here to tell you it isn’t. I read in the morning and at night before bed and listened to audiobooks in the car and while exercising. I never broke 100.

Now, maybe you’re thinking the stress is worth it. Maybe you’ll become rich and famous.

I once heard that Warren Buffet got rich and famous solely because he read a ton of books. That’s totally not an oversimplification of his life. I promise. This is the internet. It must be true.

So, let’s move on to those topics.

Retention

Let’s talk about retention. The most important thing I learned while reading a book or two a week was that I couldn’t learn anything that way.

Learning and memory happen through slow, careful study and repetition. I still remember things from books I read 15 years ago when I used to take my time and savor the reading experience.

I couldn’t tell you anything about the books I read when plowing through to make the number. The broad story arcs of the fiction are gone. The lessons from the nonfiction are gone.

What’s even the point if you’re not going to retain the information?

There were weeks I sped my audiobooks up to double speed just to get through it and make the number. This completely defeated the purpose, especially when doing it for fiction.

If you set a vague goal to read more — but you’re not trying to make a number — then you set a pace that works for you. Savor the information. Go back and reread. Analyze.

Most importantly, enjoy it.

Reading is one of the great pleasures in life.

When you turn it into a chore that must be done to hit some number, you lose one of the things that make life worth living.

Practice

It’s time to get real. No amount of information will make you rich and successful if you never put it into practice.

You can read 100 books on the lives of great entrepreneurs. You can read 100 books on starting a business, mistakes to avoid, tips for success, marketing, and so on.

But until you actually try to start your own business, none of that knowledge is going to do anything for you.

Also, there is no substitute for learning from your mistakes.

I hate to keep picking on him, but Warren Buffet has his job and then he reads outside of that. Most of us have day jobs and then the hobby or passion we want to turn into our full-time job.

If you do the job during the day and then only read about how to be successful in your side hustle, it will never happen for you.

I can’t even imagine how much faster I would have improved at fiction writing if I didn’t spend all those hours reading about writing.

I could read for hours about characterization, dialogue, theme, symbolism, emotional valence of a scene, prose style, and the other hundreds of aspects of the techniques of writing that exist.

But until I actually struggled with doing it, I couldn’t improve at it.

Make no mistake, reading and learning from the best is vital to any pursuit. But you must keep things in perspective. Never sacrifice the doing for the reading. That’s mostly going to be an excuse to not put in the hard work.

Reading is a supplement and reference. It isn’t the thing itself.

Relationships

This has to be said: your relationships will suffer. The Christmas season is approaching, and I recall one particularly embarrassing year around this time.

I had gone to Florida to visit my parents. There were times I holed myself up in my room to get through those last few books with only one week left. Those last few weeks can be like a college cram session when trying to make a number.

I had wasted much of the trip reading instead of spending time with my parents.

There were other times, in the middle of the year, that I felt torn. I “needed” to get through a certain number of pages, and I knew it wouldn’t happen if I went out with people.

I won’t spend too long on this. Just remember, there’s only so much time in a day. If you want to read 100 books a year, that time has to come from somewhere.

We can pretend like we’ll only cut out useless time, but in reality, you’re going to make cuts elsewhere if you take the challenge seriously.

Some Books are Terrible

Here’s the last thing: some books are terrible.

We all know it.

One of the greatest skills you can develop in life is the power to quit something that is a waste of your time.

I’ve wasted so much time reading books I hated because I felt bad about stopping a book halfway through. And when you try to make a number for the year, you will never, ever stop partway through.

During those years of trying to read a book a week, I suffered through such meaningless debates with myself. Could I stop at 80% and count it? I would be in trouble if I didn’t count it and had to get through a whole other book.

People often set a goal of reading 100 books a year to “make better use of their time.”

This goal can lead you to make far worse use of your time by wasting it on terrible books.

Final Thoughts

Stop reading 100 books a year or even a book a week.

Read more. Savor and study books. Enjoy them.

Reading isn’t going to make you rich and famous, no matter what some person on the internet told you. But if you read high-quality books carefully, you might be able to avoid other people’s mistakes.

Quit wasting time on low-quality books.

Take time off from reading to put things into practice and then learn from this.

Also, learn from my mistakes: no matter how you manipulate the numbers, 100 books a year is not easy and will take a lot of time.

If someone tells you anyone can read 200 a year without completely upending your life, they’re lying.