Reflections on reading 10 books in 2023

I got back into the habit of reading this year and blogged about each book I wrote. I share my reflections from the experience.

4 min readDec 20, 2023

Background on the reading goal

I came up with the goal of reading 10 books after wanting to set a non-running related goal in 2023 to keep me focused.

I decided on 10 books because it seemed like a realistic number. Part of my goal involved writing a blog post about the book after finishing it.

Read my post from January on setting the reading goal

In this post, I want to reflect on how it all went and my biggest takeaways from the experience.

A book a month is realistic for me

First off, 10 books indeed proved to be a realistic goal. Until October, I was completing a book a month.

I didn’t feel like I was rushing myself while reading. I could get through a chapter a night, and until October, I did read most nights.

Blogging was beneficial for work books, but time-consuming

The main thing that was slowing me down in my reading journey was blogging about it.

The reading was easy, but the writing was time-consuming having to:

review my notes or highlighted quotes from the books
think about what I wanted to say based on those notes or quotes
structure those thoughts
write and edit those thoughts into a post
publish and share that post on social media

For the work-related books I read, the blogging was beneficial and worth the time. I learned so much more from the books by taking the time to review them and structure my thoughts around them.

I’ve found myself going back to posts to help with my work or taking actions immediately after reading:

I went back to my Connected Campus recap to prep for a content audit my team did this summer.
I suggested to my team to do a premortem as we head into part 2 of the big, multi-year project we’re working on, as I learned about in Leading Content Design. (We technically have started part 2, but this exercise will come in handy at the start of 2024 when we start collaborating with consultants again. So this is still on my to-do list.)
I’ve already told my team how I want to change 121s following reading Radical Candor.

It was also worth the time because people in my professional network commented on how much they enjoyed these posts and took something away from it.

So in future, I’d like to keep up the habit about blogging about work books.

On the other hand, blogging the non-work books didn’t feel like the greatest use of my time. It was good for holding myself accountable to my goals, but I don’t think I gained anything by writing a post about Matthew McConaughey’s memoir, for instance.

I stuck with non-fiction as expected

I said in my blog post setting this goal I expected to mainly read non-fiction, but I’d try at least one fiction book.

In the end, I only read one fiction book, and as I reflected in my post about it, it reminded me of the reasons I rarely read fiction anymore.

Books are my new form of school, so I get a lot of fulfillment out of reading work-related books.

That said, I recently picked up a novel from my mom’s book shelf while I’m staying with her. And the one fiction book I read as part of my 10 this year was while visiting family in the US.

So maybe fiction has its place for me while on vacation.

Life can get in the way of the reading routine

I mentioned how I was reading a book a month until October. Things only slowed down at the end of the year because I moved house, ran two big races, and went to a conference all within a few weeks of each other.

After those things happened, it felt difficult to pick up the habit of reading again. I had lost the routine.

I was also incredibly tired.

I’m not saying it was a bad thing I fell out of the routine. Life happens. That’s why I set this goal in the first place — because life got in the way of reading in 2022 (in a nice way, though).

The experience is a reminder to me that if I want to read, I need to be disciplined about it. I won’t just magically start reading one day. I need to consciously set aside the time to do it.

Reading in 2024 and beyond

My plan is to keep up my reading routine in 2024, although not part of any goal I’m setting for myself.

As I said previously, if I read something work-related, I’ll blog about it. But that’s the extent you’ll hear about my reading in 2024.

I do have another goal for 2024 in mind, though. I’ll share more details on that in the new year.

The books I read in 2023 and the posts I wrote