VT Christian Reading Challenge discussion

What things have you done to secure your success in this reading challenge? (Example, I've removed Facebook from my phone and will probably remove Instagram to keep me from wasting so much of my time on social media.)

Abiding by a strict bedtime has been my challenge to myself (by "bedtime" I mean "the time I shut down the computer and go do my reading in bed").

1. Only look at Facebook once a day when all work, reading, etc, done

(Oops - posted too soon - new to this!)
2. Only check emails once a day, and not while reading
3. Leave electronic devices in another room while reading

I haven't made any changes. I already read a lot (255 books last year including a few novellas and children's books; nearly half were audiobooks). I also didn't set my goal very high, because I want to have lots of time for reading what I want to read at the moment. What I do need to do is stop spending so much time on Goodreads. :->

I read 40 books last year without focusing on reading at all. I figure I will just have to spend a little more time reading in the evenings rather than watching movies or tv. Also I plan to make the challenge work for me and not vice verse. If that means I replace a category from the third group with one from the fourth group, so be it. I do not plan to read any books that are boring me to tears.

Yeah, Saying I'm even participating in this challenge is putting it a bit liberally. I just want to read at a minimum 50 books this year.

Cynthia wrote: "...I figure I will just have to spend a little more time reading in the evenings rather than watching movies or tv... I do not plan to read any books that are boring me to tears.

Replacing TV watching with reading should make your read count go up. Before joining Goodreads, I watched TV nearly every night. After joining GR and joining the yearly challenge, I started reading a lot. Now I watch very little TV and read a lot more books.

There are some books that bored me a lot but I finished because I was reading them for various challenges. I think they were all audiobooks, though, which made them easier to finish than if I was reading them. There are just too many interesting books available to waste time reading a boring book. My eaudio selection is limited though, and I'll eventually run out of new books to listen to if I keep at my current rate (especially since I won't listen to most of the books that are available to me), so I'm more likely to not give up on them.

I think I'll be reading a higher proportion of nonfiction books this year due to this challenge.

I found that I was checking GR too many times daily. I was looking for book recommendations. I went in and changed my setting so I get one daily digest of updates for this group and that has helped me tremendously.

I've actually added "read" on my daily to do list, and scheduled it into my daily routine at least once each day. I did this toward the end of 2015 and it helped me reach last year's goal when I was way behind. I'm hoping that carrying that idea through 2016 will allow me to meet this year's goal!

I deleted the Reddit apps from my phone and Kindle today. I have wasted so much time on that site in the past year; it's quite disturbing.

I do have some meaningful conversations on there, so I won't cut it completely out. But I find that I don't mindlessly scroll through the links as much on an actual computer vs the mobile apps.

I was thinking I remembered someone posting about journaling or the methods they've used to recall quotes or important ideas that they've read. It seems like it may have been about bullet journaling, but I'm not certain. I've tried to find the post in the discussions and haven't had any success locating it. Can anyone point me in the right direction please? (And I apologize in advance if it wasn't a part of this group's discussions. More evidence of my need for a better method of tracking ideas and quotes.)

JPaul wrote: "I was thinking I remembered someone posting about journaling or the methods they've used to recall quotes or important ideas that they've read. It seems like it may have been about bullet journalin..."

is this what you are looking for? message 8? https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Yes! Thank you very much!