Well, I lasted about a week. Yesterday, I was reading Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last while my husband was enjoying a late night snack. Suddenly he remarked, “Can we please talk? I’m leaving on a trip, I’ll be gone for a few days, we hardly saw each yesterday and it seems like all you’re doing these days is reading.” Then, it hit me. This 365 day challenge of reading a book a day was not only stressing the f*** out of me, I had neglected other parts of my life. So, even though I feel embarrassed to say it, I am quitting.
My friend Kat always reminds me that can we learn lessons from every experience, especially the ones that don’t go right. So what did this challenge teach me?
1. When you commit to a challenge, make sure it’s something reasonable, attainable. I didn’t give it enough thought before I proclaimed to the world that I could do this. Only once I was knee deep into it, did I realize that it takes a good 3-6 hours to complete one book. I even bought a book on speed reading but who was I kidding? I couldn’t be a speed reader overnight. Why rush through a book? Isn’t reading about enjoying every page? Every word?
2. If your challenge is going to stress you out, it’s not the right challenge for you. Instead of enjoying reading, I instead saw it as “homework.” Throw in the fact that I Instagrammed my favorite quote and wrote a full blog post about each one and you can add a few hours on top of just reading.
3. You can’t let a challenge make you neglect important parts of your life. Reading totally consumed my life, I played less with the kids, I hardly talked to my husband and forget about jumping on my Peloton for an hour of exercise. I miss my Cody Rigsby! (He’s a spinning instructor on Peloton.)
4. Pat yourself on the back for even trying. A lot of my friends, including my husband, were shocked that I even wanted to take on a challenge like this. I honestly believed I could do it. I should be proud of the fact that I even tried.
5. Something good can come out of even a short challenge. Every night I would summarize to Sam the things I learned from each book. When I told him about Thich Nhat Hanh’s philosophy on how our parents didn’t have the opportunity (or even the luxury) to be mindful, that their actions are mostly the result of what they experienced from their parents, it made him understand his parents more. At least something good came out of reading these books!
So, there. I am officially stopping my A Book A Day Challenge. (I hate the words quitting or failing.) I learned a sh** ton, I’m still going to read but I will go back to regular programming here at Adventures of Yoo. What does that mean? Every once in a while I’ll sprinkle in a book review, but mostly I’ll update you on my journey on becoming a better entrepreneur, mom, wife, sister and person. Thanks for sticking with me.
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