My Reading Goals for 2025
🧠 On Learning
At the beginning of 2025, I knew I wanted to do as much reading as possible. Through journaling and habit tracking, I realized my mood was heavily correlated with how much I was learning. I’m still not sure which direction that relationship goes. Am I feeling good when I’m learning because I’m learning? Or am I learning more because I’m feeling good?
💡 Key Insight: Reading feels like a reliable way to ensure learning is happening continuously. The correlation between learning and mood has been one of the most consistent patterns in my habit tracking.
I’m also wanting to get into writing more as time goes on. I have a number of books that I want to write, both fiction and non-fiction.
🎯 The Initial Goal
When I started the year, I set a goal of reading 50 books. This felt overly ambitious, but I wanted a challenge that would take real effort. I was already reading quite a bit through the end of 2024, so I figured this would maintain that momentum.
📊 Initial Objectives
- Quantity: 50 books for the year
- Tracking: Monitor reading time and patterns
- Quality: Focus on books that maximize learning
📈 How It’s Going So Far
As I write this on August 28th, 2025, the results have been better than expected:
📚 Current Status: 41 books completed, mostly non-fiction. On track for ~60 books by year-end.
The more non-fiction I read, the less patience I had for fiction, which surprised me. I still want to find time for classic fiction, but sticking primarily to non-fiction aligns more directly with my goal of learning as much as possible.
This isn’t the only habit I’ve been succeeding with, and I think there’s a connection there. I’m glad to see that I was able to choose a goal, commit to it, and actually achieve it.
📚 View My 2025 Reading List (41 books)
💡 What I’ve Learned
⚠️ Major Realization: Having a goal based on number of books is a bad idea. Number of books read is a terrible metric that incentivizes the wrong behavior.
The problem with book-count goals:
- I could read a bunch of short books that don’t teach me anything ✅ Hit goal easily
- I could read a few very long, dense books packed with information ❌ Struggle to hit goal
The number of books read doesn’t really matter. What matters is how much I’m learning and the quality of the books.
🔢 The Word Count Alternative
For next year, I’m leaning towards a word count goal:
✅ Why Word Count Works
- More consistent across different books
- Tracks closer to time spent reading
- Includes articles, blogs, research papers
- Prevents gaming with short books
❌ The Challenges
- Hard to find accurate word counts
- Different editions vary
- Not all content has counts available
- Requires estimation tools
Through this process, I’ve realized I’m actually quite a slow reader, so this has been a significant time commitment.
🔧 Helpful Tool: I’ve been using ReadingLength.com for word count estimates. It’s fairly accurate but not perfect. Sometimes you can find counts in Goodreads reviews, though they may be for different editions.
🚀 Looking Forward
📝 Advice for Reading Goals:
- Stay ambitious but realistic - Challenge yourself without setting up for failure
- Think deeply about metrics - Choose what you’ll track and how you’ll judge progress
- Optimize for what you want to read - Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity
- Stay flexible - Adjust your approach as you learn what works
The goal is learning and growth, not just hitting an arbitrary number.
🎯 Bottom Line: Whether you choose book count, word count, or time spent reading, the metric should serve your learning goals, not the other way around.
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