Around this time last year I went on record with this statement about my goals for 2016.
2016 is going to be all about completion. ….
I plan to make it a year where I finish at least one of these projects: the Booker prize, Classics Club project and my World of Literature Project.
I deliberately avoided making definitive reading plans knowing how useless I proved to be in past years in sticking to them. Instead I opted for something more general thinking it would give me more flexibility and increase the chances of success.
Guess how I did on this goal?
You got it in one. It was a complete fail. Not a near miss or even a creditable effort. Not only didn’t I finish one of those three projects I barely made any inroads into the Classics Club list, reading just one ‘classic’ in the entire year (Mrs Dalloway) which leaves me with 22 still to read to achieve the goal of 50 classics by August 2017. It’s unlikely to happen….
I fared slightly better with my intention of reading more books by authors outside the western canon – 4 new countries were ‘visited’ in 2016 which takes my total to 35. Not a stellar performance but at least its going in the right direction.
Star billing goes to the Booker Prize project however where I managed to read a further 7 of the winning titles. Just 15 more to go now …
So why didn’t I achieve any part of this plan?
Either:
a) I was too ambitious or
b) I spread my efforts too broadly and would have done better being more focused or
c) I picked the wrong goals or
d) I am really bad at sticking to plans and get easily distracted.
Judging by some articles I’ve read recently about how to be effective at setting and achieving goals the issue was really a combination of b) and d). I got distracted by the long and short lists for the 2016 Booker prize so instead of reading previous winners I became too engrossed in who might win next. I also got carried away with Net Galley. Some lessons here that are influencing my 2017 goals. What are they you wonder? I shall leave you in suspense for a few more days….