If you’ve been following along in the book world for any length of time, you’ll likely at least have heard about reading goals. They’re a pretty popular topic! So now you may be wondering why you should set reading goals…is it something you should even worry about trying to do?
So why should you set reading goals? Well, reading goals are essentially just setting up a personal target for what you want to do in your reading life. There are so many different reading goals to choose from that it can feel a bit overwhelming at first and you might be tempted to not even try. But that would be a mistake, because reading goals can be incredible helpful. Here are 9 reasons you should make reading goals a priority in your life!
1. Gives You Accountability
One of the top reasons you should create a reading goal is because they give accountability. Even if you really love reading, it can be easy to get into lulls in your life where you don’t feel like reading (this can sometimes be called a reading slump), or maybe some days you’re just so busy that you get distracted and forget to read.
Having a reading goal means that you can’t just keep saying “Oh, I’ll read tomorrow.” Instead, you’ll be more likely to stay on track—especially if you’ve set specific, measurable reading goals like I always suggest. Having a specific goal you want to complete within a specified timeframe will add an extra layer of accountability to yourself that will make you more likely to keep on reading.
2. Increases Motivation
If you’re anything like me, you get excited when thinking about all the big things you could accomplish (like how many books you could read in a year) but somewhere in the middle of trying to actually do that the going sometimes gets tough. That’s where good reading goals come in!
When you’ve set measurable reading goals that you’re tracking in a reading tracker, you’re much more likely to stay motivated to actually do the reading things you want to do. It’s such an instant boost of motivation when you can see how far you’ve already come, as well as knowing exactly how far you have left to go before you reach your goal!
3. Helps You Exercise Your Brain
Reading can be a powerful workout for your brain, and there are so many benefits to regularly reading! However, you don’t get those benefits if you don’t actually read.
That’s where your reading goals come in. By having goals you’re trying to reach, you’ve made the commitment to keep on reading and in doing so you’ll be continuing to help your brain exercise and get all the lovely benefits that come from reading.
4. Challenges You
There’s a reason many people associate reading challenges with reading goals—often, setting a reading goal means you’ll be challenging yourself at the same time!
There are many ways reading goals can challenge you, no matter what your specific reading goal is. You could be challenging yourself to read more, challenging yourself to read harder books, challenging yourself to read faster…no matter what your goal is or the motivation behind it, you’re sure to find yourself growing and improving when you set reading goals for yourself!
5. Helps Build Good Habits
Another reason why you should set reading goals for yourself is because it can help you build good habits. Reading goals often focus on the good things we want to be doing, which in turn also helps us avoid bad reading habits we might have fallen into.
Reading is really just like any other hobby or habit you can get into. It can be hard to get started, but once you do get started then you start to build up and become better and better. But it’s important to keep up the routine or you might start to backslide, and that’s exactly what setting good reading goals can help you do!
Struggling to make reading a habit? Here’s help for how to reach your reading goals!
6. Expands Your Reading Horizons
Many of us pretty quickly get stuck in ruts of things that feel comfortable and familiar, whether that’s with our reading choices or even just how we live our everyday lives. But setting reading goals can help you avoid this rut and instead expand your reading horizons with more variety and diversity in your reading!
Expanding your horizons could be as simple as setting a goal to read new genres you don’t usually read, or it could look like setting a goal to read more books by authors of different genders/race/religion/disabilities/etc. to add more diversity into your reading.
But regardless of what more variety and diversity in your reading looks like to you, setting variety as a reading goal can help you expand your reading horizons and perhaps even help you discover new books you will love but never would have tried otherwise!
7. Helps You Catch Up on Your Backlog of Books
Another very practical benefit of reading goals is that they can help you catch up on your backlog of books. What do I mean by that? Well, do you also buy books and then realize you haven’t gotten around to reading them but you’re still buying more books? Or do you have a TBR list that’s a mile long?
If you’ve fallen behind and are drowning in your good intentions of reading all the books you’ve bought or reading everything on your TBR, but you just never find the time…well, reading goals can help you with that!
Setting a goal to read everything on your TBR is a great way to reduce your TBR list, or you could set yourself a goal to stop buying books for a certain amount of time or until you’ve read everything you’ve already bought.
But even if you don’t want to go to these extremes, setting reading goals will still likely help you get through a lot of your backlog of books simply because you’ll likely be reading more and thus have more opportunity to work through the books you’ve been meaning to read.
8. Offers A Sense of Achievement
Who here loves dopamine? 🙋♀️ Meeeeeeee! And probably you too. The good news is that reading goals can help you get lots and lots of dopamine by giving you a sense of achievement each time you reach your reading goal!
Dopamine is sometimes called the “reward” chemical and your brain releases it when you’ve achieved a goal. It helps with motivation and satisfaction, as well as with productivity. And guess what gives you lots of chances for your brain to release the reward chemical? Setting your own reading goals!
I love being able to check a book off my reading challenge list, and I LOVE adding new books I’ve read into my reading tracker spreadsheet. It’s such a good feeling!
When you have specific, measurable goals (especially ones you can check off daily), you’re going to get so much of this sweet, sweet dopamine reward each time you reach your goal. And while it’s great that this also helps with motivation to keep reaching other goals, it’s really also just a reward in itself and one of the best reasons to set reading goals for yourself!
9. Lets You Actually See Your Progress
Finally, the last of the reasons you should really try setting reading goals is because it lets you look back and see the progress you’ve made. It’s such a good feeling to be able to look back at all the things you’ve read and see how far you’ve come (that’s why you should be keeping a reading journal to record your books and your reading goals!).
It’s easy for us to forget how hard things used to be and keep looking ahead to future goals we want to reach, but it’s so important to take time to reflect on how far we’ve come and celebrate our wins. When you set reading goals and you reach them, you’re making so much progress and experiencing so much growth and that’s definitely something that deserves to be celebrated!
Ready to get started with your own reading goals? Here’s a step-by-step guide to setting great reading goals to help you start!