How To Complete Your 2019 Reading Goals

By Alifia Afflatus

Reading target may be just a bit of your prodigal yearly goals. It’s not urgent, compared to pursuing your school test, job interviews, business incomes or anything that has deadlines. Nobody is forced to read a new book or pursue an annual reading target. It’s an additional activity – which is outwardly beneficial – that you can do voluntarily.

However, literacy is indisputably aggravating your performance in many life aspects. For a writer, it’s extremely sinful not to increase literacy, you won’t be able ‘to write or report anything good’, writing-reading ratio is approximately 1:3, if you’d like to write better, read more books than you’ve read before. For a student, you assuredly will be left behind not to take outside referrences.

Even while not self-associating with any kind of social role, you’ll still need to be literated to improve yourself. Literary media may tell something that help you addressing a problem when people never did, it makes you reflect about your outrageous decision before you finally do something harmful, guides you when nobody does, and even interacts with you as an introvert.

That’s the reason why I’m setting up 2019’s reading goals. 50 books is evidently not a substantial quantity globally (even though considered a big number for common Indonesians). I am expecting self improvement while reading more literary works. Two years ago, I fulfilled my reading target. But on 2018, I fizzled out the goal for some reasons. This year, it shall be done better. And here’s the things worth to try to fulfill this year’s reading target.

1)      Remove Distractions

Just a few decades behind, reading used to be a trend. When smartphone and social media began widespreading accessible reports to audiences, people chose to read from instagram or facebook until now. Recently, studies say that in some countries like Indonesia, people read other people’s social media status instead of reports, essays, or literature.

There's nothing mistaken from reading digital literatures. Sometimes you just want to keep an intact international library in your pocket, and that’s fine. And while unfolding a news paper in the most impossible places can be difficult, lots of credible newsstand are now opening its digital version for your digest and research. I’m taking example from myself, where I’m in a very sticky budget and not able to purchase international newsstand while I need it. The internet provides it for me, and I’m reading them from my smartphone!

What should be noticed is the quality of what you read. Yes, people need to not limiting what they read. But most of the times, being too open to all kinds of readable things may just waste your time. Watching some unique trending youtube videos may just cut notable opportunities instead of expanding your literacy, and reading a popular celebrity status may only fill your brain with gossiping materials.

Unconsciously, some readable things are just distracting you from reading something more beneficial. And the ability to filter both types of informations is yours. If you’d like to read more, and improve your reading quality, removing those distractions is the first step. Not just distilling useless informations, but the other things like by turning off your Netflix, or setting aside your phone. If you’re reading ebooks, better switch off pop-up notifications that compell you to read a text from your friends in spite of complying your weekly reading goals.

2)      Grab free books

Some people like me having trouble purchasing new books. Reading the same book over and over may help you seeing something from different perspectives and understanding a book better. But in most of the times you just need to read something brand new.

In Indonesia, book is relatively expensive, and it’s the fact I understand that pricey book can be seen as how we are appreciating someone’s literary work. In the same time, it is requisite and need to be procurable. Last year, I’ve had problem chasing my reading goal since I can’t buy a new book, and I had to read my old books over and over. Then I realized the internet have everything you need.

There are hundreds of websites and applications for you to read. Wattpad and Sweek may be the most trending platform. There are lots of online literary magazine series (or whatever according to your topic interest), websites that offer free ebooks, and some websites ordinarily grant you wonderful amount of dicounts that benefit you because it may be a half cheaper than the price sold at the bookstore. Not only to fulfill my own reading appetite, I regularly download free books for my little cousins, sometimes as teaching materials.

3)      Read faster

To read faster, you have to remove distractions just like in the step one. Interspersing your reading marathon with watching Youtube videos can probably leave you behind numbers of books you planned to read. But sometimes, simply removing distraction is not enough. The more books you put in your reading list, the more quick you have to read it. And in fact, reading in a quick pace without leaving the comprehension (which is the most important final you need to achieve), is not that easy.

I’m calling someone who can read fast with deep comprehension a professional reader, and yes, just like the other things that professionals do, it needs to be practiced. What you will do is the ability to move your eyes rapidly through the words and comprehend the context in the same time. There is no specific way or tricks to be in that ability, and the only way to get there is to read, read more, faster, and then reviewing what you read in the end of chapter – to test if you can actually understand what you read – which is basically how someone gets used to do anything.

It’s not that hard after you’ve done lots of practice, even when you’re accidentally not in a silent place. However, reading in a quiet place without any non-direct distractions is more effective to your understanding. Therefore, multitask your reading is also not recommended.

4)      Join reading communities and  write something

I’ve never been joining any reading communities before. But my friend told me it helped him to read more books, feeling motivated, and it effectively launched his productivity. Human has a natural competitive desire and putting yourself around people who read is basically just a step of how to motivate yourselves to read more. Nowadays, people get creative and they don’t limit to open reading communities, but also reading competitions that award particular criterion of readers. Surrounding yourselves around readers means you’ll have to have a higher degree of literacy, knowing more things to discuss, and sometimes you just have to review a book.

Another thing that might motivate you to read is – believe me – writing. It doesn’t have to be a non-fiction or essays, but even being a fiction writer requires more than just imagination. It doesn’t come by itself. It is technically the accumulations of things that inspired you, that you sensed through different kinds of ways: what you saw, what you heard, what you experienced, or else, what you read.

When you want to write something and not feeling to have enough information or inspiration, or you feel that your ideas are too finite, you’ll always have to dig these informations, and literature platforms provide them for you. In a reciprocal effect, reading can actually boost more inspirations that are even beyond your expectations. []