I’m now two months in to my project of reading a ridiculously long book in the bathroom.
Here are the rules and what I learned after one month in.
I am now up to page 239 of 1285, an upsurge of about 150 pages this month. This puts me right on pace to accomplish the impossible this year.
My average in February was approximately three pages per day and in March it was five. Which means that if I keep up my March pace, I’ll be done by November.
What was different
I made one significant tweak to my process:
I tried to read two pages each time.
If its a short pit stop, I still read two. If I’m not ready to be done, then I read two more.
Rather than read for the duration of the necessary time, I’m now reading set amounts each time.
Reading in pairs of pages has the added benefit of making stopping points clear. I always know the two pages facing me (even on the left and odd on the right) are the two full pages I will be reading. So I am always ending with a fresh page or a chapter end.
This adjustment gave me a big boost to my page reading and really only adds the briefest of extensions to my time in there.
A niggling thought
The nature of this project (to read a giant book entirely in the bathroom in one year) is a giant brain trick. It is a way to do the impossible with minimal effort.
A question continues to persist, however, and one that I keep coming back to.
How much attention should we give to our projects?
As a deeply committed habit tracker, I am accustomed to giving daily, conscious attention to things I want to make sure I do. I believe in living an intentional life.
This project, unlike my regular reading project (I have successfully read for at least ten minutes every day for the last year and one day) is built on not tracking my reading. At least, not to the minute.
The point is to think “READ” first, not “get out phone, open the app, tap the cover photo, tap the timer button, and then start reading…
But the constant awareness of the reading goal and my proximity to it is in the borderline obsessive space. And, while it does spur me on some, it isn’t itself terribly helpful.
Knowing that I’m easily on pace to finish the project is 100% comforting, however. And better than that, knowing I have a process that will do it, means I probably don’t have to think about it much at all.